


The Girl Who Wasn't There

by Sturzkampf



Category: Widdershins (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-20
Updated: 2016-10-03
Packaged: 2018-08-09 22:25:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 24,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7819651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sturzkampf/pseuds/Sturzkampf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>As I was coming down the stair</em>
  <br/>
  <em>I met the girl who wasn't there</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Unwelcome Visitors

**Author's Note:**

> Mild spoilers for 'Vanishing Act'.

It’s never pleasant when the maid announces that there is a policeman at the door. It’s even worse when the policeman turns out to be a policewoman with a permanent scowl who doesn’t have the good manners to remove her boots when she walks into the front parlour. Mr Crimpleshaw hoped that none of the neighbours had seen her arrive. Respectability was important, and no matter what misunderstanding had brought this ill omen to his door, people would gossip so, and Beryl was bound to spread the news to all the other domestics tomorrow morning when she went to do the shopping.

At least he’d had the sense to have his unwelcome visitor shown into the front parlour. If this was going to be a formal interview at least he could use the best room. The policewoman refused the seat he offered, which meant that he had to remain standing too.

“How can I help you, Ms…er…”, he began, feeling the irrational guilt of an honest man suddenly confronted by the forces of law and order. He tried to think of anything he might have done wrong.

“Barber, _Captain_ Barber. I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

He felt a sudden moment of dread. It must be his brother in Halifax. What was it? An accident? William had never had a day’s illness in his life.

“It’s your daughter.”

“My _daughter_?” Mr Crimpleshaw was so surprised that he let Captain Barber continue before he could protest.

“I’m sorry to tell you that she’s been involved in a disturbance. She had some kind of nervous attack up at the University this afternoon. I’m afraid she became hysterical. We were called by the Proctor and had to remove her from the premises.”

“But…” Mr Crimpleshaw tried to interject, but his visitor ploughed on relentlessly with the air of someone performing an unpleasant duty who wants to get it over and done with as soon as possible.  

“I regret that your daughter is in a very distressed state. She has been detained at the Police Station for her own safety. We didn’t want to bring her home until you would be here to look after her. I thought it best to warn you before we brought her in. Hopefully being here with her parents will calm her down.”

“But…”

“I’ll get Constable Turner to bring her in now.”

“But…”

Before Mr Crimpleshaw could frame his objections Captain Barber crossed to the window and signalled to a police carriage parked in the street outside the house. Mr Crimpleshaw’s heart sank. All the neighbours would have already seen it and no doubt the story of his imminent arrest, probably for embezzlement and the brutal murder of his wife, had already spread the entire length of the street. A constable opened the rear door of the carriage and a young lady climbed out. He escorted her to the front door, marched into the house without knocking and brought her into the front parlour. Needless to say, he didn’t have the good manners to remove his boots either.

The young woman was around twenty years old, wearing the practical but well cut dress, bound hair and sensible shoes affected by the new generation of serious, hardworking professional young women. But today there were stray strands of hair escaping from the tight bun and the face was haggard and tear-stained. When she saw Mr Crimpleshaw, her face lit up and she took a step forward, reaching out a pleading hand, but he leant away from her in alarm.

“Father?” she said, puzzled at his lack of reaction. It was unfortunate that Mrs Crimpleshaw chose that moment to come out of the living room to see whether the visitors would like a cup of tea. Despite years of careful training, her husband had never mastered the finer points of hospitality.

“Mother!” exclaimed the girl and rushed to embrace Mrs Crimpleshaw. “Oh I have had such a horrid day. There’s a conspiracy against me at the University! When I went to my office this morning they all pretended not to recognise me! They’ve emptied my office! Stolen all my research notes! Then when I tried to assert myself they called the police and they’ve kept me a prisoner all day! Interrogating me like a common criminal! Mother? Mother what’s wrong?” Rather than comforting her distressed daughter, Mrs Crimpleshaw was standing stiff and unresponsive, looking at her with something like fear.

“Who are you, and what are you doing in my house?” she asked.

“No! Not you as well! Mother! It’s me! Clarissa! Your daughter!”

Mrs Crimpleshaw pushed her away in distress. “But I don’t have a daughter! I’ve never had a daughter! The Lord knows I’ve always wanted one, but… I have no children. Who are you?” She backed away from the young woman, tears streaming down her face.

“NO!” screamed Clarissa. She looked in desperation to Mr Crimpleshaw, but he looked back at her with stern disapprobation. Ignoring her entreaties, he turned to Captain Barber.

 “I’m sorry, but this farce has gone on long enough. I don’t know why you have brought this person here, but you are causing distress to my wife. Now, I must insist that you leave my house at once.”

Captain Barber looked furious; a proud woman made to appear a fool in public. Mr Crimpleshaw noticed that a large night stick, which he was almost certain was not standard police issue, had appeared in her right hand. Constable Turner had obviously noticed it too, because he moved very quickly to get between his superior officer and Clarissa.

“Take her back to the wagon,” growled the policewoman. She seemed to notice the night stick in her hand for the first time, and looked almost embarrassed as she returned it to its hiding place in her sleeve with a practised action.

Constable Turner had to drag Clarissa out of the room, still pleading with Mr and Mrs Crimpleshaw. Once he had her back in the corridor she lost her spirit and allowed herself to be led away, sobbing piteously. Captain Barber made a few incoherent apologies and hurried after them.

Once the door had closed safely behind the intruders, Mr Crimpleshaw put his arm around his wife and guided her back into the living room. There, he rang for tea, always guaranteed to restore sanity and respectability after even the most unwelcome of visitors.


	2. The Latest Attraction

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Warning! This chapter contains early 19th century attitudes to mental illness that are completely unacceptable to modern sensibilities._

Harriet Barber scowled at the morning post as though it had personally offended her. So far there had been nothing but bills and now she had two mouths to feed. The first mouth belonged to a large and malodorous white German shepherd dog, curled up asleep in the second-best armchair by the fire, who answered (most of the time) to Gren. The second mouth belonged to Mr Sidney Malik, Magician, Wizard (failed) and apprentice Hunter (more or less in that order), who was sitting at his desk practising his sleight of hand. Gren and Sid both thought that Ms Barber was the most wonderful person in the world.

Harry turned over the next letter in the pile and recognised the seal of Widdershins Asylum on the wrapper. Magic and the human mind are often not comfortable bedfellows, especially when the mind in question has no wizardly talent and has been meddling with imbued artefacts it barely comprehends. As a consequence, Ms Barber’s profession of hunting down rogue magic meant she came into contact with more than her fair share of lunatics. She was good at her job, so usually the artefacts ended up safely locked away in the Vault of the Royal Society and the lunatics ended up safely locked away in the Widdershins Asylum. Many of the latter liked to maintain an active one-sided correspondence, usually written in crayon. She wondered who it would be this time. It had been a while since she’d had any threats of revenge from that Zookeeper fellow. Then there was that neurotic leper who was always demanding she return his wretched magic white gold ring.

She was pleased to find that the letter was not abuse in uneven capital letters, but an almost unintelligible scrawl, apparently written by someone unfamiliar with the Latin alphabet or possibly suffering from severe arthritis in their hands. Unmistakably the writing of a doctor. This looked much more promising. With some difficulty she deciphered the message. After three times through, she was pretty sure she understood all the main points.

“Get your coat Sid,” she announced, “we’ve got to help a lady in distress!”

“A lady in distress?! Terrific!” exclaimed her apprentice.

“New inmate at the asylum. Thinks she’s a wizard.”

“Thinks she is? Isn’t she sure?”

“Oh she’s sure all right, but no-one at the University has ever heard of her.”

Sid reached for his top hat, carefully checking its perfect sheen as they left the house. “So, could be an ordinary delusional mad woman then.”

“Possibly, but if there’s magic involved, it’s always worth following up.”

They walked to Widdershins Asylum. Sid would have preferred to hire a Hackney carriage, but Harry always insisted that the business needed to save money wherever possible and anyway, a brisk mile and a half walk was exactly what he needed if he was ever going to become fit enough to be a licensed Hunter.

They went through the main gates of Asylum Park into the well-kept gardens that surrounded the main building. The Board of Trustees liked to keep the grounds attractive and inviting; it ameliorated the institutions grim purpose and helped attract the paying visitors that they relied on for funding. After an instructional and amusing afternoon viewing the inmates, families could enjoy a picnic on the lawns and provide a little extra income by visiting the café and gift shop.

Harry led the way past the public entrance, not too busy on a weekday, to a side door marked ‘Staff Only’. She knocked and was admitted by one of the orderlies, a large and burly man, obviously no stranger to violence and well able to look after himself - or any of the more disobliging inmates. As common a thug as you would find blighting any community in the world you might think, but there was something in his eyes that you wouldn’t expect to see. A compassion and gentleness not usually found in such a man. You could imagine him apologising as he kneeled on a lunatic’s back and twisted his arms to get them into the straight jacket.   

“Ms Barber,” he smiled, “Glad y’could make it.”

“Morning Humphrey. This is my new apprentice, Sidney Malik. Sid, this is my …er… contact, Mr Clinker.” Sid doffed his hat and bowed.

“No problem t’see our Ms Crimpleshaw,” Mr Clinker told them. “As she’s still settlin’ in, she ain’t been transferred t’public wing.”

“Not sure what you’ve got,” muttered Harry.

“Right. T’all depends ‘ow she behave. We may need to put ‘er in ‘Adult’ section, or mebbe put up ‘Parental Guidance’ warnin’.”

“Ah, but will she want to see us,” asked Sid nervously, who had heard all the stories about how dangerous lunatics could be.

“Oh yes, Mr Malik. She’s been demanding t’see som’un e’er since she got ‘ere.”

“So what’s the story?”

“Dr Morningthorpe ‘as case notes, if y’d like to see ‘em before y’go in. I’ll go fetch ‘im. Cup o’ tea?”

“Please.” Mr Clinker led the way into a small common room provided for the orderlies, equipped with a coal fire, a kettle heating on a trivet, several not that uncomfortable chairs, a much used deal table and most important, tin mugs and a tea pot. The mugs had clearly been liberated from the gift shop, as they had the words ‘I visited Widdershins Asylum – and they let me leave!’ painted on the side. Mr Clinker poured some hot water on the pot and invited the visitors to take a seat while he fetched the Doctor. The tea had brewed nicely by the time he came back with an energetic young man with mutton chop whiskers and a broad open smile, who handed over a large folder with ‘Clarissa Crimpleshaw (?) Case Notes’ written on it.

“Ms Barber? Harold Morningthorpe. Pleased to meet you.” Harry discreetly passed smaller but thicker wrappers back to him and Mr Clinker. She scanned through the notes as Mr Clinker poured the tea and then left the room. It would not have been right for him to stay; they took patient confidentiality very seriously at the asylum. Harry took her pipe out to help her think and noticed Dr Morningthorpe’s significant look as she lit it. With a sigh, she passed her tobacco pouch across to him. He filled his clay pipe, not without an envious glance at Harriet’s expensive and fashionable briar, and joined her in polluting the room with fragrant smoke.

“Hm, so let’s see,” said Harry. “This young woman, Clarissa Crimpleshaw, suddenly turned up at the University, claiming to be a researcher there. Only no-one had ever heard of her. Most obvious explanation is that she’s a standard delusional lunatic thinking she’s somebody important. Compensating because she’s no-one much.”

“Oh yes,” agreed Dr Morningthorpe, “King William, Napoleon, Duke of Wellington, General Arnold, Julius Caesar. We’ve got ‘em all in here. More than one in some cases. Sometimes it’s a less specific delusion that they wield some great power and that they’re actually the Prime Minister or, as in this case, a potent wizard. Probably another one been on the hashish. Poor silly girl.”

“So only an ordinary lunatic then?” asked Sid, wondering if he had walked all this way for nothing.

“That’s what the University authorities thought,” continued the Doctor. “Apparently Ms Crimpleshaw became hysterical and the police had to be called. To cut a long story short, she was taken into custody, where she gave the attending officer,” he flicked through the papers Harry had laid on the table to check his facts, “…Captain Barber – my, what a coincidence…”

“Hmph!”

“… her full details, including her address – Uxbridge Road, that’s quite a well to do neighbourhood – and her personal effects, which included a wizard’s licence, a recent bank statement and a bill from Peacock and Primark, the dressmakers on Cumberland Street.”

“Hmph, my sister Florrie goes there. Not cheap.”

“The documents clearly identified the young lady as ‘Clarissa Crimpleshaw’. Of course the University authorities have no record of her licence, although they say it is the most perfect forgery that they have ever seen! Right down to imbuing of rectitude!”

Meanwhile, Sid had been distracted by a pack of cards lying on the table, provided for the orderlies’ entertainment during tea breaks. He was amused to notice that they were marked. Out of habit he picked them up and started to shuffle them, using prestidigitation to arrange them for a trick as he did so.

“That’s a pretty determined delusion,” replied Harriet, giving Sid a sharp kick under the table to remind him to concentrate on the task in hand. “She went to a lot of trouble to deceive herself and make her delusion real by acquiring a forged licence.”

“This is when things started to get very strange. Once Ms Crimpleshaw had been held in the cells for a little while she calmed down and the police decided to take her home to Uxbridge Road. But when they got there, the people she claimed were her parents didn’t recognise her! They said they don’t have a daughter and never have!”

“So what happened?”

“As you can imagine, Ms Crimpleshaw became very upset again and had to be physically removed from the house. They took her back to the police station and questioned her again, but she refused to say who she really is and maintained that she is, in fact, Ms Clarissa Crimpleshaw of 13 Uxbridge Road and a Fellow at Widdershins University. In the end, Captain Barber lost patience and had her brought here as an obvious lunatic.”

“She dumped her on you because she didn’t know what else to do with her. Typical.”

“Not quite. The police did some more checking around Ms Crimpleshaw’s story. She’d given them quite a comprehensive account of her life, so they checked to see if it was true.”

“Let me guess. It was all a complete fabrication.”

“That’s right. Naturally, they went round to check with the bank and Peacock and Primark, but neither had ever heard of her. The clerks looked at the papers she had with her, and admitted that they looked exactly like the real thing, but that they must be forgeries, as neither business had any record of them! In fact all Peacock and Primark’s invoices have a unique number, and when they looked that number up, it was for a completely different customer! The bank statement had the cashier’s signature on it, and it was a perfect copy! The police checked the records of the church where she said she was christened, the school in Widdershins she said she attended, the University courses she said she took. The dates she registered. She gave them quite specific details. And there is no record of her at all, anywhere.”

“Having delusions of being a wizard is one thing. Inventing an entire new personality including choosing complete strangers to be your parents is something else.”

“She won’t be the first to try to forge a wizard’s licence, but it seems odd she’d forge bills. Most of us have quite enough real ones.”

“So what’s your story, Dr Morningthorpe?”

“Let’s see, the young lady was brought in two days ago. She’s been alternatively raving and weeping; your typical newly admitted lunatic to be honest. We’ve tried to have a couple of quiet chats to get at the truth, but so far she maintains this ridiculous fiction that she is this non-existent Ms Clarissa Crimpleshaw and frankly while she insists on hanging on to this delusion there’s not much we can do for her.”

“Treatment?”

“Nothing yet. The occasional bowl of gruel laced with laudanum to calm her down when she gets too agitated and upsets the other attractions, I mean patients. Of course we can’t contact or locate any relatives she might have until we know who she really is or until someone comes to collect her. The police have sent her details to all the local stations, but no-one matching her description has been reported missing, even though she’s quite a striking young woman.”

“So she must have come from outside Widdershins then.”

“Yes, but the police have checked the arrivals at the railway station and the coaching inns and no-one recalls her arriving. She has no train ticket. She hasn’t been staying at any of the local boarding houses. The investigating officer was most thorough. If this ‘Ms Crimpleshaw’ is not from Widdershins, how did she get here? The more I think about it, the more I get the feeling that there is more to this than meets the eye. That’s why I invited you here to take a look.”

“So what will happen to her now?” asked Sid.

 “Hm. Expect she’ll pay for her keep.” Harriet grumbled.

“Oh indeed! A distressed young woman is always a good draw,” declared Dr Morningthorpe happily. “I’ve already arranged for Marketing to draw up some new advertising material.” Harriet glared at him, regretting she’d given him any of her good tobacco. “Of course, the most likely outcome is that either she will recover her senses or someone will come to claim her and we will be able to send her home – or at least her family will pay for her upkeep here if she isn’t fit to be let out.”

“Hm.” They all knew that families often didn’t claim or acknowledge their lunatic relatives and left them to rot in the asylum because of the costs of looking after them and the stigma that still attached to mental illness.

“Anyway, we have her possessions here if you would like to look through them, although I am afraid that there isn’t much besides the paperwork that offers any clue to her identity; only a few nondescript personal items.”

“Could be useful. First, let’s go and see the patient.”

Dr Morningthorpe led them through a maze of corridors and then up a flight of stairs to the first floor secure rooms where the non-dangerous lunatics were kept. A burly orderly unlocked a strong iron gate and let them through into yet another corridor, lined with small doors, each with a small sliding panel in it. Dr Morningthorpe stopped at cell 151, slid back the panel and looked into the room.

“She seems quiet at the moment. Do you want me or an orderly to come in with you?”

“No, better if we see her alone, I think.”

“Very well. As far as we know, she’s not dangerous, but do be careful around her, Ms Barber. Remember all you have to do is raise your voice and help will be with you in an instant.”

“Met plenty of nutters in my time. Lot worse than this.”

The orderly unlocked the door and then swung it open to allow Harriet and Sid to walk in. She closed the door behind them with an ominous thump and they heard the key turn in the lock. The cell contained a bed with a mattress and blankets, a small table, a plain chair and a commode in the corner. Everything was firmly bolted to the floor, even the commode. The window was securely barred, but surprising large with a good view across the park. After all, this was not a prison.

Sid saw a young woman sitting on the bed. She wore a shapeless brown institution full length dress, but it couldn’t hide the grace of her movements or the attractive shape of her body as she turned to greet them. Her face was a picture of fear and despair; someone who was reaching the end of her mental reserves. He was filled with sympathy and compassion.

Harry saw a woman sitting on the bed. Her eyes were swollen and puffy from far too much crying. In her shapeless institution dress she looked just like any other lunatic. The face had a touch of pride bordering on arrogance; someone used to getting their own way. She was reminded of a spoiled child that had suddenly been told ‘NO!’ and sent to her room.

“Good morning Ms Crimpleshaw,” began Harry, sitting down on the chair. “My name is Harriet Barber – you may have heard of me.”

“Why yes!” exclaimed Clarissa, “Aren’t you the assistant of Verity Cunningham, the famous Hunter?”   

“Hrmph! And this is my assistant, Mr Malik.” Sid made his best bow and then sat down beside Ms Crimpleshaw on the bed, wondering if that was quite proper, but feeling uncomfortable hovering over the two seated ladies.

“ _I_ am a Hunter,” Harry explained, lighting her pipe, “a retriever of magical artefacts and an investigator of mysteries.” That wasn’t strictly true; a Hunter is only interested in retrieving rogue magic for the bounty, but Harry was not above solving the odd mystery if it meant recovering the artefact that had caused it in the first place.

Clarissa’s face lit up with hope. “Oh, thank the Lord you have come! You must help me Miss Barber! I am the victim of a conspiracy! I am being forgotten! They are trying to erase me from history! I have worked with Professor Arbuthnot at the University for two years now, but he suddenly denies that he has ever met me. All my colleagues support him. The authorities insist that there is no record of me. Even my Mother and Father looked at me as though they had never seen me before and sent me away. No-one believes me! I have lived in Widdershins all my life but now it is as though I have never existed! They all think I am insane and have locked me away in this madhouse! Please help me! You must believe me!”

Harry’s heart sank. It seemed clear to her that the ‘retainers’ she’d just handed over were a complete waste of money and they were dealing with an ordinary mad woman after all.

“Hmph. Conspiracy? Even your parents?”

“Obviously someone has been going round summoning the Spirit of Amnesia so that people forget me. Of course, my parents can’t be part of the conspiracy. They must be victims, just like me. Or maybe… could it be that they’re not really my parents. Could it be they’ve been substituted with duplicates?”

 “No. You say you are working for Professor Arbuthnot.”

“I have my own Fellowship. I’m not working for him, like some mere Research Assistant. I’m working _with_ him. In the Faculty of Theoretical Thaumaturgy.”

“Bit young to be a Fellow aren’t you?”

“Yes, but I was an exceptional wizard. I achieved a double first in only two years and as a result was offered a Fellowship immediately on my graduation.”

“Impressive.”

“Thank you.”

“And yet neither the Professor, nor anyone else at the University has ever heard of you.”

“They are lying!”

“All of them? And what about all the University records? Or your school? The register of the church where you were christened? You’re not in any of them.”

“Clearly, all the records are forgeries. This shows that this conspiracy is taking place at the very highest levels. The University, the Church, the Government. All are involved.”

“And do you have any idea why the entire apparatus of the State should be ranged against you?”

“I think it is because I have always been a free-thinker. One who always challenges the rules; always questions received wisdom. The University authorities are the most hide-bound, retrogressive and closed-minded men I have ever met, always placing obstacles in the way of my ground-breaking research, turning me away from my goal. I think my challenges to accepted thinking became too disruptive and the University took steps to remove me, permanently. And they are all men. They cannot bear the thought of being eclipsed by a strong-minded and independent woman!”

“Hmph. The University certainly takes steps to remove awkward and disruptive wizards, but they don’t usually go to the trouble of deleting them from history. Isn’t that right Sid.”

“Actually, a simple expulsion is usually quite sufficient, Ms Crimpleshaw,” Sidney assured her.

“I was no mere student who could be silenced by expulsion! But I think it’s not just the University. Look, I’ve been talking to the assistant in Swift’s Apothecary’s. She told me all about the Secret Society that clandestinely runs the world. I think _They_ are after my research. And now they know I know of their existence, could it be they’ve taken action to silence me? There was this policewoman who came to arrest me at the University and then took me back to my parents’ house. She was one of _Them_. I’m sure of it. Those unblinking eyes! That cold _inhuman_ expression!”

“Hmph, sounds like complete boll…”

“…a very original and fascinating theory,” interrupted Sid quickly. “We’ll certainly give it all the consideration it deserves. Won’t we Harry?”

“Oh thank you, Mr Malik!” Clarrisa clasped Sid’s hands in hers and turned the force of her pretty face illuminated with a smile full of hope on him. He blushed and looked down, but didn’t withdraw his hands.

 “So Ms Crimpleshaw,” said Harry with a scowl, “what was this breakthrough magical research of yours that these Evil Conspirators are so keen to acquire?”

 “Well, it is Theoretical Thaumaturgy. The study of the mathematical and theoretical principles underlying magic. I was making significant contributions to the field of combinational synchonicity, that’s where you summon more than one spirit at a time and combine them into a single entity, to obtain a more balanced, flexible servant to do your bidding. The foundation was laid by Professor Arbuthnot of course, but I’ve already exceeded his work, taking the first steps to a practical summons. In a few years I will have my own personal chair and will have left him far behind.”

“And how does he feel about that?”

“He was very supportive, right up until he suddenly… Oh! Oh, of course! He must have engineered all of this in order to discredit me! Yes! I see it all now! He must be so jealous of me, he has conspired with _Them_ in order to destroy me and steal my work. But no! Could it be that he is one of the Illuminati, one of the leaders of the conspiracy? He fits all the criteria. In a position of authority, a powerful wizard in his own right and he’s a man! He sits on all the committees! He’s a member of the Rosicrucians! And he’s the Chair of the Horticultural Society!”

Harriet ejected an impatient cloud of smoke through her nostrils and glared at Ms Crimpleshaw. “The Horticultural Society?” she asked sceptically. Ms Crimpleshaw got her nerves under control. Sensing that she was not get a sympathetic hearing from Harry, she turned all her attention to Sid, squeezing his hands and looking pleadingly into his eyes.

“They’re very influential,” she explained, “and they tell the Council what flowers to plant in all the parks, even the one around the Anchor. And you know what they say about the power of…”

“If we can get back to the point, Ms Crimpleshaw,” interrupted Harriet, before the patient could start gathering momentum again, “tell us about what happened the day that you were… forgotten.”

“I was a little late in because I went to see my dressmaker. I’m having a new dress made for the University Ball you know. It’s the latest style with red ribbons and…” Harry made a growling sound in the back of her throat … “, so anyway, although I am usually first in, it was almost ten o’clock before I arrived at the University. I went up to my office, but I found that my possessions including all my precious research notes had been removed and the room filled with old files. I thought it might be the undergraduates playing a joke, so I went round to Professor Arbuthnot’s office and asked what was going on but he pretended not to know who I was. When I told him I had a lot of work to get through and this prank had gone on long enough, he still denied that I was a Fellow at the University so of course I started to get angry. That attracted other members of staff and they all sided with the Professor and pretended not to know me either. That is when I started to realise this was much more serious than any student rag and then I truly lost my temper.”

“According to the police report, you became hysterical.”

“That is a slander! Of course if a man loses his temper, it is called righteous anger. If a woman stands up for herself she is called hysterical! Despite all the progress in women’s rights, male dominated society is still so unfair.”

“Go on,” said Harry, reflecting on the fact that both she and her sister Nicola had been known to lose their tempers on occasion, and no-one had ever called them hysterical; except for that pick-pocket of course, and he had had that very nasty fall down the steps to the police cells and had spent the next three weeks in hospital.

“No matter how much I asserted myself, they still maintained their evil conspiracy! All of them! And I thought they were my friends! Jealousy can be a terrible thing. Instead of sitting down and discussing the situation like rational people, they called the police, and that dreadful police Captain and her oafish minions came and dragged me away! To the police station! And locked me in a cell! And interrogated me like a common criminal!” Ms Crimpleshaw released Sid’s hands for long enough to wipe a tear from her eye. Sid gallantly offered his pocket handkerchief.

 “And then, after they found not even they could find anything to arrest me for, they took me home. I still live with my parents, but they… they didn’t know me! My mother actually pushed me away! I could see the fear in her eyes! What have they done to her? What have they done to me?” She collapsed in floods of noisy tears. Sid reached out a comforting hand.

“You may find that people will take you more seriously if you can avoid weeping at every opportunity,” Harry remarked unsympathetically.

Ms Crimpleshaw looked hurt, but the tactic helped her compose herself so Harry was able to resume her investigation.

“Now for an important question. Is there any magical spell, summoning or artefact that you have been using, or which any other wizard at the University might have been using, that could have accidentally caused this?”

“No! Nothing!”

‘Bugger,’ muttered Harriet under her breath.

“There is one thing, Clarissa,” added Sid. “I understand that all your possessions were collected when you were brought here. It would help us very much if we could take them away for examination. Please could we have your permission?”

“I suppose so, but I really don’t see how that will help.”

“It may be possible to make people forget you, but it won’t be easy to do all your possessions too. If people don’t recognise you, maybe they’ll remember something you own.”

“Oh of course. So you will help me then?”

“We will investigate your case, of course.”

“Oh thank you, thank you. I’ll sleep so much easier knowing that someone at least is out there trying to save me. At last, I have found someone who believes me! If they keep me in this place much longer, I am sure I will go mad!” She took Sid’s hand in both of hers again.

“Don’t worry,” Sid assured her, “we will get to the bottom of this conundrum, whatever it takes. I promise we won’t abandon you.” He was rewarded by a smile of relief brightening that pretty face.

Harriet Barber groaned inwardly. She knew that now she would be morally obliged to solve the mystery of Clarissa Crimpleshaw, whether there was a Hunter’s Fee in it or not.


	3. The Key to the Ivory Tower

“Do you believe her?” Sid asked Harry as they walked back to the office. He would have liked to have stopped at the asylum café and bought her a cream tea, but she didn’t believe in frippery on the firm’s time.

 “Hmph, didn’t want to say anything in front of her, but no, don’t believe her at all.”

“Really? She seems so sincere. Genuinely frightened and upset.”

“Oh, I’m inclined to think that what she’s telling us is correct as far as she believes it. Whether that has any relation to reality is something else entirely. Could everyone have been imbued with some kind of forget summons, like she says?”

 “No Harry, that only works in cheap novels. Think about it. You might be able to summon Forgetfulness or Amnesia or something. But then you need to imbue the person you want to forget. It’s incredibly difficult to make someone forget only one thing without them also forgetting where they live or how to tie their shoe laces. A skilful wizard like Professor Arbuthnot is going to be aware of someone trying to do that to him and isn’t going to let himself be imbued without a fight. And it is not only him. What about all the other members of the Faculty? The people who she claims are her parents? The porter on the gate? The cleaners? Have they all been imbued with forgetfulness? Think how many people would know her, if only by sight, in a place like the University.”

“Might work if the Professor’s doing it. Powerful wizard. Could be a bunch of them if you believe all that conspiracy theory rubbish.”

“But Amnesia wouldn’t erase all the other records of her existence; her school attendance, her University registration, her bank account.”

“So, could _she_ have been altered in some way? Been imbued with delusions that she isn’t who she thinks she is? What about the research she was talking about? Could that have caused this?”

 “That is much more likely, although I don’t really understand what she said she was doing. I suppose it could have been some kind of accident at the University.”

“It can’t have happened at the University. If she was working there, people would still recognise her even if she’s suffering from a delusion of being a non-existent person. It must have happened somewhere else. And if it did, then she’s probably not a wizard, so the most likely cause of all the mischief is some artefact that she’s got hold of. That’s what I’m hoping. It is why we are here in the first place after all. If it isn’t then we’re wasting our time.”

“But Harry,” protested Sid, “surely we can’t just abandon poor Clarissa!  She’ll be incarcerated in an asylum for the rest of her life!”

“Sid, you need to remember we’re in this for the money.”

“Isn’t that a bit mercenary?”

“This is a business. Needs to make money. So we can buy luxuries. Like food. And pay the rent on the office and your flat. Otherwise we’ll end up sleeping under the railway arches. Can’t help every lost lamb. We get money by finding artefacts and handing them in for the Bounty at the Royal Society. If we don’t we starve. Can’t expect to walk round to the Council Offices every week and ask for a handout if we’re out of work.”

“I suppose not” muttered Sid, but Harry could see that he was still going to keep working to save a maiden in distress no matter what.

“Of course, there is a third explanation,” she told him.

“What’s that?”

“She’s a nutter.”

“You think she might be a hashish fiend after all?”

“All that conspiracy theory stuff certainly sounded completely bonkers to me.”

They turned the corner into Falloakes Street and Harry unlocked the door to their office. Gren welcomed her back from the hunt, while Sid brewed a pot of tea.

“Right then,” Harry continued, once they were settled with the tea cups and biscuits, “assume this is caused by an artefact. Where is it and what is it?” She mechanically fed her biscuits to Gren as she thought. “To find that out we need to find who ‘Ms Crimpleshaw’ is and where has she come from.” She indicated the box Dr Morningthorpe had given them at the asylum. “So let’s have a look at her possessions. Might be a clue there” Sid took off the lid and placed the items inside on his desk, one by one, once he’d cleared enough space amid the clutter to put them.

“Here’s her wizard licence. Ms Clarissa Crimpleshaw, Faculty of Theoretical Thaumaturgy. Certainly looks real to me. These aren’t easy to forge. Here’s the bank statement that Dr Morningthorpe mentioned; Dalrymple and Waldenmeier, same bank that we use; looks exactly like one of their statements. Here’s the dressmaker's invoice and GOOD GOD!” Harry was on her feet in an instant, ready for any emergency. Gren sprang to her side, barking excitedly. Sid was staring at the invoice in shock.

“How can a dress _possibly_ cost that much?! That’s more than all the clothes I own put together are worth!”

“Not difficult. Give.” Sid handed the paper over. Harry shrugged.  “Seen worse. You should see how much some of Florrie’s dresses cost. What else is in the box?”

“The contents of her handbag. A small compact with a mirror inside. Some pencils. Small portable ink bottle, a box of Perry’s nibs, a pen. Small bottle of… _bleugh_ … smelling salts. Small bracelet, looks like gold. Pair of earrings. Rather nice ornate necklace – _Lecta phasmia_ – none of them magical and - oh!” He took out the last item in the box, a large and ornate key. “Now that’s odd.”

“Why?”

“You don’t recognise it? I don’t suppose there’s any reason you should. I expect Dr Morningthorpe didn’t attend the University here. I thought the police might know though.”

“Because?”

“This is a key to a University office. For a permanent member of staff. They’re quite distinctive. See?”

Harry took the key and examined it with a critical eye. “Hm. Fancy enough to be magical. N109 on the handle.”

“That would be the room number. The letter ‘N’ denotes the building so that would be, ah, the Newton Building. That’s …er… Faculty of Theoretical Thaumaturgy I think.”

“Ties in with Ms Crimpleshaw’s story. It would help if we could find out if she really is a wizard or not. Too bad we don’t know anyone who could just look at her and tell. So, is the key magical?”

“ _Lecta phasmia_. Imbued with a little conspicuousness and remembrance and rather a lot of honesty. I’ve heard of that. It’s to stop absentminded academics losing or forgetting them and if they are lost it encourages members of the public to hand them in.”

Harry took Clarissa’s possessions over to Gren, who sniffed the various items. She showed no interest in most of them, but when her owner waved the key and the wizard licence under her nose she gave an interested ‘wuff’ and her tail started to wag. Sid felt a little miserable at that. First, there was the fact that Harry felt the need to use Gren to check his magical readings. Second, he realised he’d forgotten to perform a reading to check the authenticity of the licence. He was keen to make a good impression on Harry as he hoped that one day, like Gren, he would be important enough in the her eyes to have his own armchair by the fireplace, rather than having to make do with the rather decrepit office chair at his desk. His spirits fell as he realised that once again he had fallen short of her expectations.

Harry kept hold of the key, but put the rest of the items back in the box and handed them over to Sid. Now Sid had identified the imbued items, it had been a good opportunity to reinforce Gren’s training by letting her sniff out the magic. She picked out a custard cream from the biscuit barrel and gave it to her dog as a reward. It didn’t occur to her that Sid would have liked one too.

“So, why would Ms Crimpleshaw go to the trouble of getting a fake University key?” she mused.

“Being given one of those keys is a real status symbol; a mark that you have achieved a permanent position at the University.”

“Ms Crimpleshaw would be a little young to have one of these wouldn’t you say? She can’t be much older than you are.”

“Unusual but not unheard of. The more talented wizards are sometimes taken on as permanent research fellows straight after graduation. That is what Clarissa said she was so it’s quite natural for her to have her own office – and the key to fit it.”

“So the University should have a record of where this key should be and who should have it. Could this be a forgery like the documents?”

“I suppose so, but if Clarissa only thinks she’s Clarissa because of a rogue artefact, where have all these things come from?”

“Hmph. If this were a novel, now’s the time I’d throw it in the fire, because nothing makes any sense. Come on Sid. Time to start doing some detective work.”

\-----------------*

Harry and Sid were walking the streets of Widdershins again, this time up the hill to the University of Widdershins. Ms Harriet Barber was well known around the campus, although she was not universally popular. Like most hunters, she was regarded by the academics as a necessary evil, useful to have around to clear up the indiscretions of colleagues, but not someone you would want poking her nose into your own business.

Widdershins University is right next to the Great Anchor, and is, naturally enough, the oldest part of the Town. The original medieval buildings, although they have greatest architectural and historical importance, are nowadays used for the less important functions of the institution, such as administration and teaching students. The academics themselves work in more comfortable modern buildings that have sprung up around the original University site. While the architectural traditionalists may decry the cultural vandalism that has seen these modern neo-gothic monstrosities slammed up adjacent to the ancient structures, they have to be admit that it is much more pleasant to work in offices that have modern features like their own fireplace, walls and rooves that are actually rain proof and windows that let in the light. The Newton Building, named after the Father of Modern Magic, is one of the newest additions and quite unashamedly modernist. The myriad carved gargoyles and elaborate stonework, both inside and out, are a deliberate statement by the architect Charles Barry that the University is striding forward into the future, not stagnating in the past.

Harry presented her card to the porter. She knew that arriving without an appointment always ran the risk of the academic being somewhere else; teaching, in a meeting or ‘catching up with references in the library’, but on the other hand it did mean that if someone did have a guilty conscience they weren’t tipped off and didn’t have a head start. Fortunately, Professor Arbuthnot was in his office and ready to see them. After a very short wait they were ushered up the imposing stone staircase to the academic’s office.

The Professor was a tall man, past the best of youth but in surprisingly good condition for one who spent most of his time indoors. He had the typical full beard of the academic, but he still kept it trimmed like a young man, rather than allowing it full reign in the manner of a patriarch. Harry surreptitiously checked the corners of his mouth for traces of spittle but she could see no hint of guile or madness in his friendly grin. The Professor rose from his desk to greet them and shake hands. He invited his visitors to take a seat and then realised there was not, in fact, anywhere in his office for them to sit down. All the horizontal surfaces, including both the visitor’s chairs, were piled high with papers, books and folders – the result of years of pulling things out to read and never putting them back, either from absent-mindedness or the fact the space from which they had come had already been filled by something else. At least the piles of papers that Professor Arbuthnot removed from the chairs looked as though they were student essays, so hopefully they had not been lying around for too long, but some of the books and journals that cluttered the carpet obviously had not been moved for years.

Arbuthnot picked up a large book to make room to put down the papers he had picked up from one of the chairs and then looked around for somewhere to put the book. Not finding a suitable space he picked up a folder dated five years ago to make room and then, at a loss, wedged the folder with several others on top of the books on a sagging bookcase. Having finally cleared some space, he sat down at his desk with an apologetic grimace.

 “I suppose you’ve come about this unfortunate young woman who was here last week. Such a shame for insanity to strike one so young. Are you acting on her behalf?”

Harry didn’t answer directly, but instead began with a few questions about the events of the previous week. Arbuthnot’s replies confirmed the basic account from the police report and Clarissa’s own statements.

“So you’ve never heard of this Ms Candice Crimplesham then?” Harry asked. Sid looked at her in puzzlement.

“No never seen her before in my life. And nor has anyone else in the Faculty. As you can imagine, it was all rather distressing for everyone.”

“Only, if you’ve never seen her before and has nothing to do with the University, why did she have a key to an office in this building in her possession?”

“A key to an office? Are you sure? May I see?” Harry passed it across. “Hm, it looks like one of our keys – room N109 - that _is_ for the office that the unfortunate young lady claimed was hers. But that office is kept for my research assistants and I don’t have one at the moment. The room is empty.”

“So who would have a key? Do you have a spare?”

“No. There is only one copy of each key. Security you know. The person who looks after the spare keys is Mr Hagman, our building manager. You’ll have to talk to him to find out if this one is missing.”

“Could she have had a duplicate made?”

“It’s possible I suppose. But how would she get one? It’s quite a complicated design and even if she could get access to the original, no reputable locksmith would agree to duplicate a University key.”

Harry didn’t bother to expand the Professor’s education by explaining that there were plenty of disreputable locksmiths who wouldn’t ask awkward questions. “She could have had, for instance, a wax impression.”

“But this key isn’t just a duplicate of the parts that turn the mechanism. You can see that all the University keys have a distinctive design so they are instantly recognisable. Look at my office key for instance.” He reached into his pocket. “Oh…”

“Give him his key back Sid,” sighed Harry. Her apprentice fished into his inside jacket pocket and handed the key over with a sheepish grin and an apology. The Professor gave him an odd look.

“Ah, you’re _that_ Mr Malik. I should have known. Anyway, you can see that although these are different keys, they share the same common design. Very distinctive. And that would explain one odd thing. After the young lady had been removed, we found that the door to that office was unlocked. We had to ask Mr Hagman to fetch the key and lock it. I assumed the door had merely been left unlocked, but if she had a duplicate of course she could have opened the door. The University keys are also imbued with Remembrance, Conspicuousness and Honesty. In fact… _Lecta phasmia_ ,” said the Professor, moving his hands just so. “…like this one. In fact, exactly like this one.”

“Any wizard could have imbued a fake key.”

“Yes, but this key has been imbued for a long time. You can tell by the touch of the reading. It reads just like a real key. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that this was one of our keys.” He handed it back to Sid.

“And you know Harry,” added her apprentice as he examined the key, “I’d say this isn’t a new key. Fresh cut metal has sharp corners and rough edges where it has been milled. Look - here, you can see that this one has seen years of use, riding around in people’s pockets, turning the tumblers of the locks hundreds of times. You can almost feel the use it has had. I know a bit about locks from my magic studies…” The Professor raised an interrogatory eyebrow. “Stage Magic,” Sid explained.

“Hm, so if this is real key, she must have stolen it.”

“There’s always the possibility that she has the same… unfortunate condition… as myself. This could be the real key that she accidentally stole.”

“There’s a simple way to find out,” announced Arbuthnot. He led them out into the corridor and down the corridor to room N109. Sid put Ms Crimpleshaw’s key in the lock and turned it. The lock opened, if rather stiffly.

“This could use some oil,” he pointed out. “The lock hasn’t been used much recently.” He opened the door. The room was piled high with bound bundles of paper.

“Thought you said the room was empty,” said Harry.

“Perhaps I should have said the room wasn’t occupied,” explained the Professor. “There’s no such thing is an empty room in a University. We’re using it to store old examination papers from the students. We’re obliged to keep them for seven years you know.” Even though Sid was no longer a student, the mere mention of exams was enough to send a shiver of fear down his spine. Harriet scraped her boot across the floor and looked at the furrow of dust she had made. She wiped her finger over the nearest bundle of paper. It came away covered in dirt. She moved one of the crates and looked at the pristine surface revealed beneath. These piles of paper hadn’t moved for a year or more. Yet Ms Crimpleshaw said that this had been her office only last week. If this was all an elaborate conspiracy by the University it was the best that Harriet had ever seen.  

“But your building manager locked the door after the young lady had left you say?” She turned the key in the lock a few times to make sure it really did work the lock. “So he must have had a key even though this one was in the possession of the young lady. I think we’d better go and talk to this Mr…?”

“Hagman,” said Professor Arbuthnot. “Follow me.” Harry locked the door to room 109 and put the key in her pocket. The Professor led the way down to the other end of the corridor where a clean shaven man in his forties sat in an alcove reading the racing pages of the Widdershins Gazette with as much concentration and erudition as any wizard pouring over an ancient manuscript. He got to his feet when the Professor introduced his visitors.

“Mr Hagman, this is Ms Barber and Mr Malik, who are here to investigate the unfortunate incident with that young lady last week.”

“Ah, sad business were that. Pleased to meet you miss, sir.”

“We’re looking for the key to room N109. Do you have it?”

“Why o’course. Now we’re using it as store room it’ll be downstairs in key press. Would y’like me t’ get it?”

“If you please. Now Ms Barber, I will leave you in Mr Hagman’s capable hands if I may. Please come back to my office when you’ve finished.”

“Thanks for your help.”

“My pleasure. I do hope that you can help this unfortunate young lady, whoever she may be.”

Mr Hagman led the way back down the stairs to the basement. He walked with a stick and had a pronounced limp.

“Y’ll have to excuse me being slow on stairs,” he apologised, “I’m not as sprightly on me leg as I used t’ be.”

“Leg? Singular?” enquired Sid.

“Only th’ one now I’m afraid. At least only one made of flesh and blood. T’other one from the knee down is good piece o’ ‘onest English oak. I left original on field in Spain, somewhere near Vitoria.”

“Oh an ex-army man. What regiment?”

“I had the good fortune t’serve w’South Essex. Ah, ‘ere we are.” They arrived at an unmarked door. Mr Hagman produced another of the magical keys and opened the door to a small store room. He crossed to a cupboard on the wall. The hooks inside were all labelled, but only a few had a key hanging from them.

“Now then, y’ wanted key t’ unused office. N109 if I remember right. I’m sure it’s ‘ere because it was t’one that poor distressed young lady said were ‘ers.” He took the key from the hook. “’ere it is.”

“But we already have a key for N109,” explained Sid, “and it looks to be one from the University. We were wondering if you are missing one.”

“Tha’ can’t be right. Every key’s unique. Only one made t’match specific lock.”

“So, what’s this? A forgery?” asked Harriet, “or perhaps this is the real one and a forgery has been left in its place.” She passed Ms Crimpleshaw’s key to Mr Hagman, who examined it with an expert eye.

“Tha’s odd, it looks just like real thing.” he said, and held them together up to the skylight window to compare the patterns of the wards and bittings.

Sid blinked.

“Don’t you think it strange there isn’t a key to that particular office?” he asked.

“It could be merely be coincidence,” replied the building manager. “It would explain why she didn’t have a key of her own. Or it could be why she pretended to have that office, knowing there was no key.”

“I don’t know,” said Harry. “It’s all a bit too convenient. How could she know that that was the one office that has never had a key if she isn’t a member of the University? Anyway, thanks for your help.”

“Not a problem, Ms Barber. My pleasure, I’ll make everything ship-shape here, if you can find your way back upstairs.”

“Thanks again Mr Killick,” said Sid as they left. “Always good to meet an old Navy man.”

\---------------*

“I didn’t want to correct you in front of the Professor,” said Sid, as they walked back upstairs, “but I think our client’s name is Clarissa Crimpleshaw, whereas you said…”

“Two points Sid. One. Not ‘our client’. Not paying. We’re looking for an artefact. Two. Know her name damn well. Wanted to see if he did. Academics can’t resist correcting someone else’s mistake, even if they’re pretending they don’t know. Didn’t notice.”

“Of course, it could be that he was clever enough not to fall for the trap.”

Back in the Professor’s office Harry asked a few more questions about research students and even, against her better judgement, about the Horticultural Society. It turned out that the Professor was indeed the Chair and had strong views on the flowers that should be planted in the Great Anchor Park. Apparently it was a controversial subject, but as far as she could tell it had everything to do with aesthetics and cost to the public purse and absolutely nothing to do with magic, secret societies and the mystery of Clarissa Crimpleshaw. Still it did confirm that Clarissa had her facts correct, but then again someone obsessive enough to forge bank statements to invent a new personality would take care to know every detail of the Professor’s life.

“One more thing Professor,” she asked, “is there anything you are doing here, any spell research, any summoning, any magical artefact that you know of, that could have caused this young woman’s delusions?” Despite her offhand manner, she was watching Arbuthnot very carefully as she said it. The Professor frowned, considering. There was no immediate denial, the reaction that she would have expected from a guilty man.

“Hm, of course magic use by the weak-minded is well known to cause madness. Such madness would most likely arise from the use of an artefact by a non-wizard and of course the proximity to the Great Anchor would make any effects much worse. And how madness would manifest is, by its very nature unpredictable. But… no, I’m afraid that offhand I cannot think of any specific magic or artefact that would cause this particular madness specifically. But I wonder. There have been various attempts to create narrative illusions via artefacts – why people aren’t satisfied with books I’ll never know – although as I recall the results have never been very successful. If this young lady were to have got hold of one of these failed experiments and somehow has become imbued by the Illusion and convinced she is actually a character from a romance… That could be an explanation, although I don’t know enough of the details to say if that is even feasible. Leave it with me and I will do a little research around the subject. And perhaps discuss it with my colleagues to see if they have heard of anything like it. Do let me know if there is anything I can do to help, won’t you?”

\---------*

As they walked back down the hill, Harry was not satisfied. Nothing made any sense.

“What did you make of the Professor Sid?”

“He seemed genuine enough to me.”

“Me too. Damn it! He was even trying to think of how magic might be responsible! If he’s got anything to do with this, he’s the best actor I’ve ever met. But either he or Ms Crimpleshaw must be wrong.”

“Unless he’s been made to forget.”

“We’ve already been through all that. So, what’s our next move Sid?”

“Hm, let’s see. I suppose… Go and see Clarissa again and let her know what we’ve discovered.”

“No. Go and talk to the parents. That is at least, the people Ms Crimpleshaw thinks are her parents, even if they’ve never heard of her. What’s their address again?”

Sid consulted his notes. “Ah, here we are. 13 Uxbridge Road. Oh. More walking.”

“Correct. Do you good.”

“What are we hoping to learn from them?”

“If they’re telling the truth. Could be that the parents pretend they don’t know their daughter because she’s gone mad. It’s a respectable neighbourhood after all.”

“But their own daughter! No-one could be that heartless!”

“Actually Sid, yes they could.”

Sid was feeling a cheated. When he had first met Harry, he had been thrown into the exciting world of the Hunter, straight from the pages of a Henry Barber Adventure; pursued by dangerous criminals; travelling in wild and perilous places; battling with Villains both spiritual and earthly; getting handcuffed by attractive young women. He’d especially enjoyed the last part. Now that he’d finally been taken on as an apprentice he had been hoping for more of the same, preferably with opportunities to heroically defeat monsters to save Clarissa and impress Harry, but so far this investigation had been nothing but walking round the streets of Widdershins asking people questions. He hadn’t been shot at once. He ruefully reflected that no-one was going to be writing a story about _this_ case. Nothing interesting had happened at all.

\-------------------*

They walked past the Royal Theatre, still a ruin covered in scaffolding and tarpaulin because the insurance company were refusing to pay up, to the southern suburbs of Widdershins. Number 13 Uxbridge Road was a new villa, built soon after the war. Not an area where the wealthy lived and not an area where the poor lived. An area for the comfortably off. People who valued good manners and respectability. The small front garden was full of carefully nurtured flowers, planted in respectable straight lines, and the austere lines of the stone house were softened by window boxes full of colourful blooms.

The door was opened by a prim and respectable maid who took Harry’s card, closed the door and left them waiting on the doorstep. Two minutes later she returned to say that she was sorry, but Mrs Crimpleshaw was not at home. The visitors had no choice but to withdraw in ignominy.

“What do we do now?” asked Sid, as they stood on the pavement looking up at the impenetrable fortress of propriety. Harry was sure she saw the net curtains twitch.

“Now,” she replied, “although I hate to admit it, we need the assistance of an expert at getting into other people’s houses.”


	4. The English Tea Ceremony

When Mrs Florence de Montfort received an invitation from her sister Harry to actually help in a case, she arrived at the office door as fast as her expensive carriage could bring her. Given the time it took to prepare the horses, harness them to a carriage, get the footmen changed into their best uniforms and manoeuvre the entire panoply round to the front door of Roslyn House it would have been far quicker for her to walk across East Anchor Park and up the High Street to the office on Falloakes Street, but that was not the point. Anyway, while the carriage was being prepared she had time to change into her new travelling ensemble and get her maid to brush her new fur pelisse.

Florrie perched on Sid’s chair while her sister explained the strange story of Clarissa Crimpleshaw.

“So there you have it,” Harry concluded. “We need to talk to the Crimpleshaw’s, especially Mrs Crimpleshaw I suspect, but we can’t get over the threshold. We’re not the police so can’t get a warrant. Any ideas? Maybe wait outside and collar her in the street?” Florrie looked at her sister with something like pity.

“Of course she won’t see you Harry. You’re a hunter! Hardly a respectable profession is it?”

“Pays the bills.”

“Yes, but you haven’t been introduced. You can’t turn up at a respectable lady’s house and expect her to invite you in off the street for tea. What you need is to be accompanied by a Lady with a higher social standing than this Mrs Crumplebottom…”

“Crimpleshaw.”

“…someone whom she will want to talk to, want to be seen with. Someone she can boast about to her friends.”

“Who would that be?”

“Why me of course! Don’t be so silly Harry! Someone like that would give her right arm to be admitted into my social circle. Rather pathetic social climbing, but then, that’s the way people are.”

“Right, but me and Sid need to be there to ask the questions.”

“Harry! Mr Malik cannot _possibly_ come. It would be most improper for you to visit accompanied by a young man who is not your fiancé! He isn’t your fiancé yet by any chance?” Harry glared at her in silence and ejected pipe smoke out through her nostrils. “No, you can come without Mr Malik as my spinster sister. _That_ won’t be a problem at all.”

“ _Spinster_?”

“You’re not getting any younger you know, and… oh that’s nice!” Florrie’s train of thought was always easily derailed by shiny things. She picked up the necklace from the box of Clarissa’s possessions that was still open on Sid’s desk.

“No Florrie, you can’t have it,” Harry sighed. “It belongs to Ms Crimpleshaw.”

“But it would be simply perfect with my new walking dress! Do you think she might sell it?”

“Why not buy one from Tiffany’s? Anyway, you already have enough jewellery to open your own shop.”

“But this is different! Unique! It must be from the middle of the last century. You can tell by all this ornate filigree here.” She held the necklace up to the light from the window to get a better look. “Oh but look, it’s not quite right. See how the mounting here isn’t properly symmetrical. Looks like the jeweller made a mistake while he was making it and spoiled the whole thing. Oh, and then there’s damage where someone’s made a bad job of trying to fix it.” She put the necklace back in the box and immediately lost interest in it.

“If it is a reject, then I suppose that would explain how someone of Ms Crimpleshaw’s modest means came to own it.

“Oh yes, not worth very much at all,” said Florrie disinterestedly, “but oh, look at these nice earrings. And the bracelet.”

“Nothing special.”

“”But they are! These are real gold. Haven’t you looked at them?! And these are sapphires and diamonds in the earrings. Must have cost a pretty penny. I thought you said this girl was only an academic at the University. How could she afford these?”

“Hm. Rich parents.”

“Not if they’re living in Uxbridge Road. They’ll only be professional types, greengrocers, bank managers, university administrators. You know, the little people. Comfortably off, but not rich enough to buy things like this.”

“And then there was that receipt from Peacock and Primark,” added Sid. “That dress wasn’t cheap either.”

“No wait,” said Harry, “that’s a forgery. She didn’t actually buy that.”

“Um, perhaps not, if she’s delusional,” replied Sid, trying to get it all straight in his head.

“You use Peacock and Primark Florrie. Does this look like one of theirs?” Harry handed the bill to her sister, who looked at it without much interest.

“Honestly Harry, I have no idea.”

“Aren’t you one of their best customers?”

“Don’t be silly! Someone else pays the bills. I never get to see them and…” She turned the paper over and her eyes widened in surprise. “Oh! Oh! This is really, really important! Why didn’t you tell me! Didn’t you read what’s written on the back?!”

“It’s only a description of some overpriced dress.”

“Some dress! A mushroom silk ball gown, with red ribbons! And flared bretelles! And a darted bodice! Oh! Oh! _And a pleated bertha_!!”

“Absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”

“But Harry! It sounds completely divine! I’ve never heard of anything like it. Why ever haven’t they shown it to me! It must be from the latest Paris catalogue! Oh! I must have one! Well, not one exactly like this of course. Like this, only better! Taffeta instead of ordinary silk!”

“To get back to the point, if she’s not getting paid much, and she isn’t rich to start with, where’s the money coming from? She's definitely got the jewellery, even if the dress is a figment of her imagination.”

“No! No! The point is that if this dress is a figment of her imagination we must get her out of that awful asylum as soon as possible.”

“Because she isn’t insane?”

“No silly! Because I want to employ her as my personal dress designer! You can’t let talent like that go to waste!”

“Better solve the mystery then. Need to talk to her mother.”

“Oh Harry, let’s go and take tea with her. This will be fun!”

 “What is it about this obsession with tea anyway?” grumbled Harry. “Why do we have to sit there with a tiny cup and saucer in our hands while we talk?”

“Because it’s a way of timing the visit. Look, we are going to go into Mrs Crimpleshaw’s house. How will we know when it is time to leave? If we go too soon we may cause offence. How we will we know when our hostess wants us to leave? We don’t want to overstay our welcome do we? We need to stay long enough to be polite but not so long that it becomes embarrassing.”

“We go in; we ask questions; we get answers; we go away.”

“Honestly Harry! I can’t imagine why you were never any good in the Police force. You sound more like Nicky every day.”

“Hmph!”

“This is a social visit Harry! We’re not going there to interrogate the poor lady. We need to observe the conventions of polite society. It’s not as though we can go in with an hour glass and plonk it on the table. That’s what the tea is for. The time it takes for the hostess to ring for the maid and order tea, the time it takes for the maid to bring the tea and pour it, and the time it takes us to drink the tea – no slurping mind – that’s what regulates our visit. Then when we’ve finished our tea our hostess will ask us if we would like some more. The way she asks will tell us whether she wants us to stay longer or whether she wants us to go. That way everything is managed politely and everyone knows exactly where they stand.”

“How do you know all this stuff?”

“How have you lived this long not knowing it? Look, we can go in my carriage. Shall I come back in say, two hours?”

“Two hours? Why not now?”

“I need to change my dress because this one stinks of pipe smoke. Anyway, you’ll need that long to change into _your_ dress. You do have a proper visiting dress don’t you?”

“A dress? Why do I have to wear a dress?”

“Because you are supposed to be a Lady.”

“Am a lady. Was last time I looked.”

“No. A _Lady_. With a capital L.”

“Hrmph! Hate wearing dresses. Suppose I need to chase a Villain?”

“Then I’m sure your Mr Malik will oblige.”

“Not _mine_. Anyway, there are no pockets. Where am I supposed to keep my pipe and tobacco? In my handbag?”

“Tobacco! You mustn’t smoke in the parlour Harry! That isn’t the done thing at all! Honestly, how you manage to survive on your own amazes me! You’ll have to leave that disgusting pipe with Mr Malik.”

“No pipe! How long will this visit take?”

“Oh, no more than an hour. You can manage that can’t you? You smoke far too much as it is.”

“Harumph!”

“If I can’t come to tea, what should I do?” asked Sid. “Perhaps I could go back to the asylum and reassure Clarissa that…”

“No,” Harry snapped, “you are going to the Church to look up the details of Ms Crimpleshaw’s christening.”

“But the police have already done that!” Sid protested plaintively.

“They say they have. But if the authorities are really involved in something underhand they could always be lying. I want you to go and check it out yourself.”

“Oh. Alright then.” Sid had been hoping for something more exciting.

“And while you’re at it, do a reading on the registers to see if there’s been any magic used on them. And check for missing pages, erasures, changed entries, that sort of thing. And check earlier dates to see if there ever has been a Clarissa Crimpleshaw in the past.”

\----------*

Two hours later, Ms Harriet Barber, resplendent in her one and only dress and but in no happy frame of mind, emerged from her office. When Florrie had returned, she had been horrified that her elder sister’s dress was at least two seasons old, and was actually a travelling dress rather than a proper visiting dress. When Harry had started arguing she declared that it didn’t matter after all, as the fact that she clearly had no sense of style whatsoever would explain why Miss Harriet had not been able to find a husband yet. Things had got even worse when the subject turned to bonnets. Harry hated wearing hats with a passion, especially impractical bonnets that restricted peripheral vision, but Florrie had insisted that it was absolutely impossible to turn up for tea without one, and under no circumstances whatsoever must she take it off in the house. The discussion had grown quite heated and the two sisters came close to Having Words. In the end, Sid had managed to smooth things over by suggesting that Harry was, in effect, wearing a disguise, so perhaps wearing a bonnet this once would not damage her image as a Hunter.

“After all,” he told her, “in the Henry Barber adventure books, your grandfather often used to disguise himself by dressing up in ladies clothes.” In retrospect, Sid thought that Henry Barber used to disguise himself in ladies’ clothes more often than was strictly necessary, but perhaps that was only been a trope adopted by the authors. Finally Harry had been dressed to Florrie’s satisfaction and allowed out of the house to be loaded into the waiting carriage.

“As a matter of fact,” Sid remarked to Gren as they watched the sisters drive off, “I think Harry looks very pretty in a bonnet.”

Gren gave him an incredulous look.

“Don’t worry, that’s a secret I’m never going to share with a living soul,” he assured her.   

In the carriage, sisterly harmony had been restored, more or less. Florrie prattled on about the complicated problems associated with choosing shoes. Harry was not listening; she was mentally preparing herself for the ordeal ahead. Her pipe and tobacco had already been given to the largest footman to ensure that she didn’t light up in the coach by force of habit and imbue her dress with the stench of stale tobacco.

The coach arrived at 13 Uxbridge Road. Harry was about to get out, but Florrie stopped her. Ladies do not allow themselves to be left standing on the doorstep. Instead, they stayed inside the coach while a footman took Mrs de Montfort’s card to the door and waited for the response. Within a minute he was back to announce that Mrs Crimpleshaw was at home to Mrs de Montfort. Harry climbed out of the coach, managed not to trip on the hem of her dress, took a deep breath of distressingly pure air and followed her sister down the path to the house.

\-------------*

Miss Harriet knew it was going to be a tough assignment the moment she walked past the flowers in the front garden and in through the front door. The hall was hung with printed reproductions of sentimental paintings of cute children and kittens. The maid took them through to the front parlour, where Mrs Crimpleshaw was waiting to meet them, bubbling with excitement to have such prestigious visitors. Miss Harriet had all the information she needed by the time she sat down, but even she couldn’t walk out again before she’d even said ‘good afternoon’. She had already framed her first question; something along the lines of ‘Is this person calling herself Clarissa Crimpleshaw, currently being detained in the asylum, actually your daughter, and if not, why is she claiming that she is?’, but once the introductions were over, Florrie got in first.

“Mrs Crimpleshaw, I heard there was a ghastly misunderstanding last week, when some horrible policewoman brought a lunatic round to your house. It must have been simply awful for you.”

That was all their host needed to tell them all about that unfortunate encounter at great length, with brief pauses to tell Beryl to bring the tea and some cakes (the coffee ones, not the plain) and to ask her guests how they took the tea when Beryl brought in the tray.

At first Miss Harriet tried to process the stream of information, with its many diversions and irrelevant asides, but it was like listening to fingernails being scraped across a blackboard. Mrs Crimpleshaw’s conversation consisted mostly of verbatim exchanges she had had with various female relatives about how upsetting the incident had been for her. After ten minutes she had told her visitors nothing about the incident that was not in the police report. At least they did learn in passing that Mrs Crimpleshaw had informed Mr Crimpleshaw that he didn’t want to take up fishing after all and that her niece had recently given birth to a daughter. Mrs de Montfort listened as though it was the most fascinating thing she had ever heard in her life.

Miss Harriet found herself obsessively watching the level of the tea in the cups of the other two ladies. When the cups were empty, she could leave. Of course she had finished her own long ago. Several times she had to stop herself reaching for a pipe that wasn’t there to calm her nerves. Even if she’d wanted to participate in the conversation it would have been difficult. Mrs Crimpleshaw had perfected the art of taking her breaths in the middle of sentences, so there was never a natural pause in the conversation where it was possible to get a word in edgeways without interrupting.

Mrs de Montfort took a sip of tea. The level in her cup hardly moved at all. Miss Harriet tried to distract herself by examining the room. There were more of the sentimental pictures of children on the walls and several of the new imbued physautotypes on the sideboard. All were pictures of children. The hands on the mantelpiece clock crept around the dial.

Finally, Mrs de Montfort drained the last drop of tea from her cup. Miss Harriet felt a flood of relief. She gathered her skirts ready to leave.

“More tea, Mrs de Montfort?” asked Mrs Crimpleshaw.

“If you please,” replied Mrs de Montfort with a broad smile, before Miss Harriet could refuse.

“And for you, Miss Harriet?”

“Yes,” growled Miss Harriet, “please,” she added in response to a gentle nudge from her sister. Her hand shook and rattled the cup on the saucer as she graciously accepted it. In desperation she took three sugar lumps, remembering just in time to use the damned fiddly sugar tongs instead of picking them up with her fingers.

“So, Mrs Crimpleshaw,” said Mrs de Montfort with a malicious grin, “you were telling us about your niece’s baby?” Miss Harriet silently wished all the torments of the ninth circle of Hell upon her sister.

“Why yes!” exclaimed Mrs Crimpleshaw. “Such a beautiful little angel. That’s her picture there on the sideboard. I’ve been to see her a couple of times. I said to Agnes, ‘can I hold her?’ and she said, ‘no, she’s just gone to sleep’ so I said ‘but it will only be for a moment’ but she said ‘not until after luncheon’ – she always was the bossy one – so I said ‘what are they going to call her’ and she said ‘Sandra’ and I said ‘what are they going to call her that for?’ and she said ‘I don’t know, you know what young people are like nowadays’ and I said ‘why don’t they call her a nice traditional name?’ and she said ‘I think Victoria would be a good name, you know, after the Princess’. I went to see her procession you know…”

 “What about Clarissa?” asked Mrs de Montfort. “That’s a nice name.”

“Clarissa? Yes that is a nice name of course. As it happens Crimpleshaw said ‘why don’t they call her Clarissa’ and I said ‘why would they call her that’ and he said ‘I’ve always liked it’ and I said ‘I suppose so but if anyone asked me, which they don’t, why not call her Elizabeth after mother and he said ‘that’s a bit old-fashioned isn’t it’ so I said ‘there’s nothing wrong with sticking with good old fashioned names that were good enough for our generation’. But no, young people today have to have their modern ideas they get out of racy novels. I blame that Jane Austen…”

 Miss Harriet drank her tea as though she’d been stranded in a desert for a week. It only gave her a sugar rush that made her feel much worse. She was aware that Mrs Crimpleshaw was still talking.

“…so I said to her when I met her at the butcher’s on Wednesday, or was it Thursday, no I tell a lie it was Tuesday because Dorothy had her horrible dog. You know I can’t stand dogs. Crimpleshaw likes them, but I honestly cannot see why he would possibly want one…”

 “What a nice necklace, Mrs Crimpleshaw,” smiled Florrie, diving into a gap in the stream of words with expert precision. “It must be very old.”

“Why thank you! It’s a family heirloom. I always wear it. It’s been passed down from mother to daughter for generations. It is so sad that I had no-one to leave it to.”

“So if you had had a daughter you would have given it to her?”

“Oh yes, family tradition was to pass it to the eldest daughter when they turned sixteen, just as my mother gave it to me. I suppose I will have to give it to Sandra when she gets old enough. To keep it in the family. But that might make Letitia upset that I didn’t give it to Katherine, but that girl is such a disappointment. I’m sure she wouldn’t appreciate it. Do you know she wants to go around wearing trousers and making a living drawing pictures? And as for her hair, well! Not respectable at all… ”

The tide in the tea cups went out slowly. Very slowly. Miss Harriet bit her tongue until she could taste blood. It was the only way to stop herself screaming.

Finally, finally, the second cup of tea had been drunk, the tea things had been collected, the guests had thanked their host for such a wonderful afternoon and been shown to their waiting carriage. The visit could not have lasted more than an hour, but Miss Harriet felt it had been the longest day of her life.

\-------*

The footman was waiting outside by the carriage, holding Harry’s pipe and tobacco ready for her when she came out. To everyone’s surprise she did not immediately start smoking the moment she took her seat and closed the door.

 “Not going to let tobacco be the master of me,” she announced, crossing her hands across her chest in grim determination. “Going to sit here and wait until we drive back to the Office before I pick up my pipe and have a well-deserved smoke.”

She managed four minutes and thirty four seconds. Florrie watched her draw on her pipe with resigned indulgence. Of course her visiting dress would be ruined, but then again there was that lovely velvet ensemble in the new catalogue from Paris and she hadn’t been to see her couturier for simply ages.

“You know, you often go much longer than that without smoking and don’t even notice,” she scolded. “You only have a problem because you knew that while you were in there you couldn’t smoke.”

“Not only that,” exclaimed Harry between puffs, “it was the constant stream of random words. How can anyone talk so much and say so little. Been through some pretty tough adventures in my time and faced some truly nasty Villains, but I tell you, at one point there I thought I was going to crack. Not sure if I would have killed her or myself.”

Florrie gave a sniff of disdain. “Honestly Harry, and you call yourself a detective! You need to listen more carefully. She told you everything you needed to know, especially after she opened up during that second cup of tea.”

The carriage delivered the ladies to Harry’s office. Sid was already back, tired and footsore. Harry firmly refused his offer to make them a cup of tea. In truth he needed one himself after a fruitless afternoon walking around town and pouring through piles of dusty books in which he’d failed to find any reference to Clarissa Crimpleshaw, anywhere, or any evidence that records might have been tampered with, magically or otherwise. He’d waited until the ladies got home, but now he could hardly make tea for himself if they didn’t want any.

Once everyone had settled down and Harry was well into her second pipe, they exchanged notes. Sid’s confirmation of what they had already been told didn’t take long. If he had been hoping for some praise for his diligence he was disappointed.

“We didn’t get much either,” complained Harry. “At least not from what Mrs Crimpleshaw actually told us. In fact although she talked non-stop for an hour I don’t think she actually said anything at all.”

“Oh but she did,” exclaimed Florrie. “She told us that she has no children but she really wants one of her own, preferably a daughter, and how jealous she is of her sisters, who all have children and now one of them has actually got grandchildren!”

“Don’t remember her saying that.”

“Obviously she wouldn’t tell us that directly. But she talked non-stop about her sisters’ children. When she told us about this Clarissa person being brought to her house, she didn’t simply tell us what happened. She told us how she’d told her nieces and what they said and what they thought about it and what she thought about what they thought. That’s the important thing for her. And all those pictures of children on the walls and the pictures on the sideboard. Because she has no children of her own, she uses her nieces as a surrogate.”

 “In that case,” said Sid, “it doesn’t seem likely that if Clarissa really is her daughter that she would deny her and abandon her in the asylum if she were to become insane.”

“What a horrible thought Mr Malik! Whoever put such a terrible idea into your head? Of course, it is absolutely impossible that such a woman would deny her own daughter.”

“Wonder if Mr Crimpleshaw feels the same way. Never saw him.”

“I don’t suppose he would have any say in the matter. Remember he likes dogs and fishing, but she isn’t having any of it. Quite right too.”

 “Was one thing,” Harry told them, “although it only makes things more complicated. Mrs Crimpleshaw certainly looked like Ms Crimpleshaw. They could easily be mother and daughter.”

“Gosh, that’s interesting! Although of course that might be coincidence.”

“Hm, yes. More than that. Their ears are very similar. Characteristic very small earlobes. Quite round.”

“Harry, what have ears got to do with anything?” protested Florrie.

“Everything. Shapes of ears run in families. One thing you can’t change easily. Could swear those two are related.”

“That’s fascinating. So why didn’t Mrs Crimpleshaw recognise her own daughter?”

“Oh I know!” exclaimed Florrie, supressing the urge to put her hand up like a schoolgirl in class. “Maybe Mrs Crimpleshaw won’t acknowledge her daughter because Ms Crimpleshaw’s ears don’t look like Mr Crimpleshaw’s…” she gave a little giggle, “…if you see what I mean.”

“Doesn’t cover this case. If Ms Crimpleshaw had turned up out of the blue from the wrong side of the blanket, then perhaps Mrs Crimpleshaw would deny that she had a daughter. But the daughter says she’s been living with her parents all her life. No, that one won’t work.”

“Oh.” Florrie was disappointed, then remembered something else.

“Did you see she had the same necklace as the one Clarissa has?”

“Saw she had a necklace; looked similar. Another forgery?”

“No, that wasn’t a necklace like the one that Clarissa has. It was the same necklace. It had exactly the same mistake and the same damage. They would never have been two made like that – or damaged like that.”

“But that’s impossible!” exclaimed Sid. “The necklace has been in the box on my desk since you left!” He checking his pockets and then looked in the box to be certain. “See, it’s right here. Are you quite sure?”

“Believe me,” Harry assured him. “When it comes to jewellery, you can trust Florrie with your life.” She turned to her sister. “What is it about little shiny pebbles dug out of the ground that you find so fascinating anyway?”

Florence held up the glittering bracelet on her wrist and admired the sprinkling of light in the late spring sunshine. “Honestly Harry, if you need it explained, you are never going to understand the answer.”

 “So what now?”

“Been round the houses with licences and missing keys and we’re getting nowhere. Ms Crimpleshaw says she’s a wizard and she isn’t. There’s no record she exists except the papers she has on her. She has an exact duplicate of this necklace. How obsessive do you have to be to have such a perfect reproduction made, even if you can find someone skilful enough to do it without access to the original? And she has Mrs Crimpleshaw’s ears. All these anomalies and coincidences can’t be simple madness and I don’t believe in some convoluted conspiracy. There must be magic at the bottom of all this. I think that someone is not telling us everything and I think that person is Ms Crimpleshaw herself.”

“But you said she thought she was telling the truth!” exclaimed Sid.

“But is it the whole truth? The one thing that stands out no matter what explanation we chose is that Ms Crimpleshaw has more money than she should. And grandad always says ‘Follow the Money’. Ms Crimpleshaw is getting it from somewhere. Expensive jewellery. Expensive dresses that may or may not be imaginary. Tomorrow, we go back to the asylum and ask her some more questions. And this time, I’m taking a big stick.” She saw the shocked expressions on Florrie and Sid’s faces. “Oh please. Metaphorically speaking, obviously. Do I look like a policewoman?”


	5. Newton's Fourth Law

 “Oh Mr Malik, thank you for coming!” Clarissa went straight up to Sid as soon as he walked into her cell and clasped his hands in hers. “I’ve been so frightened here by myself. So afraid that you would forget me too!” Sid was embarrassed but made no attempt to remove his hands or move to a more respectable distance from the young lady. They sat down together on the bed, although Sid was careful that both his feet remained on the floor at all times. Harry made a loud growling sound in the back of her throat, noisily lit a Congreve on the brick wall and took the chair directly in front of Ms Crimpleshaw.

“Oh, and Mrs Barker, too, nice to see you,” Clarissa continued, not taking her eyes off Sid.

 “I’ll come straight to the point Ms Crimpleshaw,” snapped Harry. “Either you tell us exactly what magic you were doing that caused all this or we walk away from this case, and you spend the rest of your life as an instructive example of the perils of loose living.”

Ms Crimpleshaw’s turned to her in dismay. “But I’ve already told everything! You said you believed me!”

“If you won’t tell us the whole story, including all your illegal activity, we are wasting our time here.” Harry rose as if to leave.

“No wait!” Ms Crimpleshaw’s voice rose in panic. “Please, don’t leave me!” She looked anxiously from Harry to Sid. Harry sat down slowly and raised a questioning eyebrow. Clarissa seemed to shrink, fear competing with desperation on her face. She clasped Sid’s hand even tighter.

“How did you know it was illegal?” she asked in small, frightened voice.

“Some sort of magic involved and you are the most likely person to have been doing it. You’re getting money from somewhere. Most probable explanation as to why you didn’t tell anyone about it even now is that you were breaking the law. Now, if you want to get out of here, you need to decide if the punishment for your actions will be worse than the alternative.”

Tears ran down Clarissa’s face.

“I was… I was performing lateral acquisition.”

“Lateral acquisition!” exclaimed Sid, “but that’s expressly forbidden. It’s against the University Regulations!”

“Those are a bunch of stupid rules imposed by a bunch of stuffed shirts to hold back progress and maintain the means of production for their own greed.”

“You can’t use lateral acquisition! All sorts of terrible things will happen!”

“Like what?” asked Harry.

“Er… well, I’m sure I attended that lecture, but I think I may have lost the thread after about ten minutes.”

“You drifted off and started thinking about card tricks.”

“Actually, yes. That tended to happen a lot.”

“Still does. So Ms Crimpleshaw. I take it you were breaking the rules by casting these summons at the University. Tell us about this ‘lateral acquisition’ spell.”

 “You start by summoning inquisitiveness and acquisitiveness,” Clarissa explained. “If you combine them into a single construct then it will want to find things. You remember that I was working on combinational synchronicity. And then if you combine it with summons of insight and foresight it can see where the things you want are.”

“You created a magical thief.”

“No! You don’t take things that belong to other people. This is where the lateral acquisition comes in. The insight allows it to look at things I already have and then go and fetch a duplicate for me from outside.”

“What do you mean from outside? From Lancashire?”

“No, from outside. From Somewhere Else. Like in the poem, you know, from ‘Halfway Down the Stairs.”

“What?”

“Remember? ‘ _It isn’t really anywhere, it’s somewhere else instead_.’”

“Sid?”

“Sorry Harry, I’ve never heard that poem either.”

“No, you idiot, I mean about the magic. What is she on about?”

“Um… ah… there are supposed to be different places, different worlds out there. In theory. Like the place where the spirits come from. They have to be summoned from somewhere. Er… don’t they?”

“You don’t know either, do you?” Sid looked at his boots, suddenly feeling completely useless.

“It’s very complicated,” explained Clarissa, giving his hands a little squeeze of support. “The latest theories postulate a series of different planes of existence that also contain the same objects as in reality. My state-of-the-art constructs can easily cross the divide between the planes using a modification of the summoning and desummoning spells that I have devised and bring a duplicate of any item I desire back to me.”

 “And you worked all this out by yourself?”

“Yes, as I said, it’s quite complicated, but I have a first in theoretical thaumaturgy and I…”

“…am lying,” interrupted Harriet, completing the sentence for her. Clarissa flushed in indignation.

“How dare you! I will…”

“…be spending a very long time entertaining the good people of Yorkshire unless you stop pis… wasting my time. Now…” Clarissa looked downcast.

“If you must know, I summoned the Spirit of Erudition and it explained the basic principles. Very well, it explained everything to me. Which spirits to summon. How to combine them into a construct. All of it.”

“I’m sure you still needed to be very clever in order to understand it all and put it into practice,” Sid told her kindly. Harry leaned back in her chair and scowled.

“But Clarissa,” continued Sid, desperately trying to remember half-forgotten lectures, “are you sure that’s right? What about Newton’s Fourth Law of Magic? The spirits can’t have told you how to perform lateral acquisition and all the rest. It’s forbidden by the very way that magic works. Isn’t it?”

“What are you talking about?” exclaimed Clarissa. “Newton only postulated three laws!”

“But I’m sure that…”

“Did _you_ get a double first in only two years?”

“Actually they invited me to leave before I got my degree, but that was because…”

“There you are then!”

Sid looked unhappy. He was well aware of the gaps in his knowledge and couldn’t trust himself when all doubted him, but he was sure he was right. Well, almost certain…

 “Tell me, Ms Crimpleshaw,” snapped Harry. “This wonderful double first in only two years. How much of that was your own efforts and how much was plagiarism by the spirits you summoned?”

“It was not plagiarism! That is a terrible thing to accuse me of!”

“Most of it, then.” Ms Crimpleshaw flushed with a mixture of anger and guilt.

“What did you get the spirits to duplicate for you?”

“I… well… mostly small things that I deserved…”

“Go on.”

“Money. Gold sovereigns and bank notes. I had to have the original so the construct would know what to bring me.”

“So, in short, you use summoned spirits to steal money for you?”

“It’s not stealing! No-one lost anything! I was fetching duplicates! Things that existed somewhere else!”

“And were presumably owned by other people from the other dimensions?”

“I… No… Perhaps. I didn’t think…”

 “Obviously not. You were using this highly illegal lateral acquisition method to accumulate wealth so you could afford expensive gold bracelets and dresses and live the lifestyle of a rich lady.”

“I don’t see why I shouldn’t have nice things.”

“I don’t either. But you get them by working hard and earning them.”

“I was working hard! But as an academic! And I was being paid hardly anything! Society doesn’t value learning! And how many of those rich ladies driving around in their finery have worked hard for what they have?” Harriet thought of her youngest sister and inwardly admitted that Clarissa had a point.

“I think we are getting away from the important issues again, which is, how did this cause your current predicament?”

Clarissa hesitated and looked down at the floor, unable to meet Harry’s glare.

“It couldn’t. It’s completely impossible,” she said softly.

“You’re lying again.”

“No! You must believe me! I…”

Harry stood up.

“Warned you already about wasting my time! Come on Sid, we’re leaving. Goodbye Ms Crimpleshaw. Enjoy your stay.” Sid stood uncertainly, ready to follow.

“NO!” Clarissa fell to her knees and clung to him, “PLEASE DON’T ABANDON ME IN THIS TERRIBLE PLACE!” Sid looked embarrassed, unsure what to do. He patted her on the head uncertainly, as though she were a dog. Harry was already at the door, asking to be let out. She tut-tutted irritably. The histrionics were starting to get repetitive. Two orderlies came in and, not unkindly, untangled the patient from Sidney’s legs. Clarissa threw herself down on her bed and started sobbing uncontrollably. Harry almost had to drag her apprentice out of the room.

“But Harry!” protested Sid as he followed Harry down the corridor, “we can’t just leave her there. Can we?”

“Can’t we? Hrmph. Been breaking the rules. Don’t like that. And she’s still holding something back. Now we need to talk to someone to tell us what exactly she has been doing wrong and whether this could have caused this entire mess. What about all that stuff about constructs and stealing money from Outside?”

 “I’m not sure. I never got to the complicated bit before…”

“…before they chucked you out.”

“Exactly. It was all a bit theoretical for me to be honest. I’m sorry, but I don’t understand it.”

“Then we’ll ask someone who does. Come on.”

\------------------*

Professor Arbuthnot was delighted to see them again. He was clearly eager to hear about their progress in the Crimpleshaw case, but Harry suspected that this had more to do with an interest in any magical effects that might have caused the mystery, rather than any concern for Clarissa’s predicament. She listened as he outlined several promising theories that he had considered to explain her inexplicable delusion, none of which she understood, but as his conclusion was that none of them were viable, it didn’t actually matter.

The Professor was fascinated when she told him what Ms Crimpleshaw had been doing – or claimed she had been doing. The creation of constructs from combinational synchronicity of multiple summons was indeed his area of expertise, but only at a theoretical level. However, when Harry told him that she had actually been creating such constructs, his eyebrows raised in surprise.

“My dear Ms Barber,” he explained. “I am very much afraid that this young woman has been lying to you. It would be completely out of the question to attempt the creation of a construct. There are far too many ethical considerations before a practical experiment could even be considered. For instance, what would be the effect on sentient spirit minds if you combined them into one gestalt entity? And what would happen to them when they were desummoned? Would they be sent mad as they were ripped apart? And should something go wrong with the summoning resulting in a malform, why, the results didn’t bear thinking about!”

“What about this claim of acquiring objects from Outside?” Harry asked him. “Didn’t understand that.” The Professor settled back into his chair and went into ‘Lecture’ mode.

“We know there must be another reality. Where else can the Spirits we summon come from? It is a short jump to imagine there must be many others. It is difficult to explain the Borborygmus Paradox or the Krazokzk-Bzork Effect without postulating multiple adjacent realities like our own.”

“Identical to this one?”

“Similar, but all slightly different. The further from our own, the more different they might be. For instance, you could even imagine a reality where True Magic failed to conquer the Old Gods and the Earth Power of the Ley Lines still holds sway. Such a world, riven by discrimination, prejudice and irrational divisions, would be a true Hell on Earth.”

The Professor noticed the expression on Sid’s face. “Only speculation of course,” he assured his visitor with a grin. “Don’t lay awake at night worrying that such a place might exist or about the plight of the poor people who might be living there.”

“Of course, if we can summon spirits from other planes, then in principle it would be possible to bring objects too, so called lateral acquisition, but even if a wizard could determine the incredibly complicated summons necessary, no-one in their right mind would ever attempt it. Such things are strictly forbidden.”

“Why?” Harry asked. “She said it was against the rules.”

“There are rules and rules,” explained Arbuthnot. “First there are rules that you might call the Laws of Nature. For instance an object falling to earth accelerates at approximately 32 feet per second per second.  Water at atmospheric pressure boils at 212 °F and freezes at 32 °F. Or take Newton’s Four Laws that govern the way that magic operates. They are all descriptions of the way the Universe works.”

“Oh, so there is actually a Fourth Law then?” asked Sid. The Professor gave him a stern look.

“Of course!” Every wizard knows there are Four Laws.”

“Summons can’t tell wizards how to do magic? Why is that a Law of Nature?” asked Harry.

“There’s a lot of hypotheses, but the conventional wisdom is that as the spirits arise from within ourselves, they cannot know anything that mankind does not.”

“Makes as much sense as anything else I’ve heard today. But our Ms Crimpleshaw tried to tell us that there are only three laws.”

“Then she is certainly no wizard. Even the most ignorant fresher knows Newton’s Four Laws.” Sid looked at his boots, unable to meet Harry’s scornful look, which in truth, only existed in his imagination.

“But lateral acquisition isn’t prevented by any fundamental law of Nature then.”

“No, the rules against lateral acquisition aren’t that kind of rule. There’s nothing in the way the World works that says that lateral acquisition cannot occur. In fact, they say that in principle lateral acquisition can occur. Such magic is forbidden because this is one of the other type of rule. Rules such as ‘Do not smoke while handling large quantities of gunpowder’, or ‘do not walk into the St Patrick’s Arms whistling _Lilliburlero’_. These rules exist because the consequences can be very serious indeed if you disobey them. Those are the reason we have rules forbidding duplication magic.”

“You know, there are certain types of students who spend a lot of time arguing over the difference between ‘Intelligence’ and ‘Wisdom’. Lateral acquisition provides a definitive answer; a very elegant demonstration. ‘Intelligence’ allows you to work out how to summon a series of Spirits in order to fetch a duplicate of a valuable item from an adjacent reality. ‘Wisdom’, on the other hand, is not doing it!”

“So why is lateral acquisition like smoking around gunpowder?”

“Because two objects from adjacent realities – the same object - cannot co-exist in the same reality any more than two solid objects can exist in the same space. That’s one of the first type of rule I was telling you about. You might be safe so long as the original and the duplicate were kept apart but as soon as they come close to each other, well…”

“So what would happen when the two objects came together? Would there be a big explosion?”

“Probably not. There are several different theories, but the most likely theories are that either both realities would cease to exist or, more probably, that the two objects would simply cease to exist. They would be expelled out of reality.”

“That – doesn’t sound good.”

“It isn’t. And it gets worse. Not only would they cease to exist, they would cease to ever have existed. As would any agency that had brought the two together.”

“That’s a bit extreme. How does that work?”

“Because these objects and the agents exist in four dimensions, the three dimensions of space and one of time. Look, consider this piece of paper. Think of it as a two dimensional object, the breadth as ‘space’ and the width as ‘time’. Now if this piece of paper is destroyed,” he tossed in onto the fire and watched it burn, “not only is its spatial dimension destroyed but its temporal dimension too. Not only has it been removed, it has never existed.”

Harry and Sid nodded wisely as though they understood every word.

“You say it only happens when the objects come together. How close is ‘close’?”

“Oh, the theoretical critical distance is defined by the Kirchweger Threshold. To all intents and purposes, they have to touch.”

“So, if Ms Crimpleshaw had been foolish to attempt magical lateral acquisition and brought the original and summoned objects together, then she and the objects would vanish and her timeline would vanish and she would to all intents and purposes never have existed. Wouldn’t that explain why no-one has ever heard of her?”

Doctor Arbuthnot sighed. They got the impression that he did that a lot when he tried to explain Theoretical Thaumaturgy. “No, I’m afraid not. We would expect the agent of the Kirchweger Event to be erased entirely. Not only her temporal form but her spatial form would have vanished. In effect she would vanish and have never have existed in the past or will never exist in the future. There might be some turbulence as the reality rearranged itself around the gap, much as the paper is consumed by the fire with much smoke and flame, possibly some echoes of memory or odd paradoxes. But such effects would be very short lived, seconds to minutes at the most and there might be none at all.”

“Damn, I thought we had it then, but this doesn’t help either does it?”

“No, sorry. You know, it sounds to me as though this young lady has serious gaps in her knowledge, as though she has learned odd facts from books, or picked up random pieces of information. You might expect that if she was working with a powerful wizard. That might be a useful line of enquiry. What you have said suggests she may have been involved in something along the lines you have described, but I still can’t think of any specific events that would cause her past to be erased without affecting her future timeline or her physical form. If I think of anything, I’ll let you know. This is the most fascinating problem I’ve come across this year. You will keep me abreast of any developments, won’t you?”

As Harry and Sid left, the Professor was already scribbling thaumaturgical diagrams in his notebook.

\---------------*

Harriet felt dispirited when they finally got back to the office. They’d spent a lot of time and a not inconsiderable amount of money attempting to solve this mystery and had gotten nowhere. Even worse, there was absolutely no sign of any rogue artefact involved that could be retrieved and turned in for the bounty. Her hopes of some quiet time alone to think where dashed when Florrie barged in and insisted on hearing all about the day’s investigations. Florrie didn’t do ‘quiet’.

“How did you get here so soon?” Harry asked her sister irritably, wishing she had a maid to say that she was not at home. “Paid an urchin to watch the door and run to you with a message the moment we arrived? Had your carriage on permanent stand-by to whisk you here at a moment’s notice?”

“Yes of course,” replied her sister. “This is the most exciting thing that’s happened for weeks! Now come on! Don’t keep me in suspense! What’s happening?!”

Fortunately Harriet could rely on Sid to do most of the exposition. Florrie listened intently to his story.

“But Mr Malik!” she cried as Sid finished, “didn’t you ask her about that wonderful dress?!”

“Ah, no, sorry Mrs de Montfort, I’m afraid it slipped my mind.”

“Tch. Men. Honestly. You never focus on what’s important.”

“Important thing is that Ms Crimpleshaw still isn’t telling is the truth,” Harry retorted.

“What if this is all part of Professor Arbuthnot’s Evil Plan and he is the one that is deliberately lying to you?” asked Florrie.

 “Hm, good point. You’re the wizard Sid. Was all that stuff about the Laws of Magic true or not?”

“I think so Harry, but like I said, I didn’t really enjoy the theoretical side of magic…”

“This is not the dark ages,” Harry snapped. “These days we have a wealth of information available instantly at our finger tips. In things called ‘books’.” She reached up to her book shelf and was about to take down “ _Bayaz’s Ars Magika_ ” but then decided she’d emphasise her point and handed him “ _Magic for Nincompoops_ ” instead. The sarcasm was not lost on Sidney Malik. He did his best to step up to the crease and, for once, applied himself to the task in hand.

“Ah yes,” he said after five minutes reading, “here we are. Yes, as far as I can see, this agrees exactly with what Professor Arbuthnot told us. Newton’s Fourth Law of Magic. The spirits are bound not to divulge information on their nature or the means of summoning or controlling them to the wizards that do summon them. It’s all part of the fundamental rules of the Universe, like the Law of Gravity. There’s no way round it. As the products of humanity, they cannot have information that is not already known. There’s no way that Ms Crimpleshaw can have obtained the secret of lateral acquisition from the Spirits themselves.”

“She worked it out herself? Or someone else told her?”

“Who? Not the Professor? And why does no-one remember who she is?”

“She must be covering for someone. There was something she still wasn’t telling us. Thought it was the stuff about why the summoning’s so dangerous, but maybe there’s still more she can tell us.”

 “So what now?” asked Sid, “I suppose we go back to the asylum to ask Ms Crimpleshaw some more questions?”

“No,” grumbled Harriet, “Been a long day and I’m tired. Can’t be bothered to traipse all the way back to the asylum. Let her stew. More likely to get the real truth after she’s spent another night thinking about her options.”

“But Harry! We can’t desert that poor young lady, alone and frightened in that cold and lonely cell!”

“Can. Stop letting your feelings get the better of you Sid, just because she’s a pretty little girl who keeps holding your hand and giving you the puppy-dog eyes. Would you make all this fuss if it was some pudgy middle-aged bloke in there? Thought not. She’s broken the rules. Let her sweat for a bit.”

Sensing her mode and feeling more dejected than ever, Sid went into the kitchen to brew up a nice cup of tea and make a plate of ham sandwiches for supper. With a deep scowl Harriet slumped into her armchair and reached for her pipe. Then she noticed the expression on her sister’s face. Florrie was beaming all over her face, almost jumping up and down on the spot with glee. There was a significant risk she might burst from excitement.

“What’s the matter with you? Solved it have you?”

“Oh Harry! Harry! You’re _jealous_!!”

“Hrmph. Stuff and nonsense.” Harry reached for her pipe and went through the motions of lighting it, in a vain attempt to prevent the need for further conversation.

“Now don’t deny it. You _do_ like him, don’t you?”

“Don’t want him getting soppy. Can’t stand soppy.”

“Don’t be so coy! Oh, this is wonderful! Have you shown him off to Mother yet? He’ll make such a fine husband!”

“Better than yours anyway,” snarled Harry nastily. Florrie’s good humour crashed into the buffers and was brought to an abrupt stop.

“That’s a cruel thing to say! If we are getting personal, then I shall leave!” She snatched up her fur pelisse and flounced out. Harry didn’t look up when the door slammed behind her. She felt a moment of bad-tempered satisfaction until Gren gave her a reproachful look from the other armchair.

“She started it,” she told her dog defensively. Gren did not deign to dignify that statement with a response. With a sceptical sniff she put her head down and went back to sleep. She was right of course. It had been a mean and spiteful thing to say. Now Harry felt guilty, which made her more ill-tempered than ever.  

Sid came back in with the tea and sandwiches.

“Ah has Mrs de Montfort left already? I made some…”

“Hrmph.” The twin streams of high pressure smoke jetting from Harriet’s nostrils told Sid all he needed to know. He put Harriet’s sandwiches down beside her chair, poured her a nice cup of tea and then took his own supper over to the safe haven of his desk to think about the problem in peace. Having racked his brains for all of five minutes, he decided he didn’t understand what was going on and produced a pack of cards to practise his conjuring.

Harry sat staring into the fire, turning the case over in her head, her ham sandwiches quite forgotten, which was fortunate, because her dog had already eaten them. She was sure she had all the facts she needed to solve the strange case of Ms Clarissa Crimpleshaw, if only she could work it out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _No surprise that Mr Makik was not familiar with 'Half Way Down the Stairs' as A.A. Milne will not publish it until 1924_


	6. Echoes of Memory

Harriet and Gren, both lost in thought, jumped at Sid’s sudden yelp. They both looked at him and growled.

Sid was grinning all over his face. “Harry! Harry, look, let me show you a trick!”

“Very well, if it will make you happy,” said Harry, as though she were indulging one of her nieces.

“No, no, this is important. Now watch.” Sid came over to her chair and spread a fan of cards in his hand – the thirteen cards of the suit of Hearts. He closed the fan, did something with his hands that Harry didn’t quite follow (that always annoyed her, but she had too much pride to admit it) and spread the fan again. There were only twelve cards; the Queen of Hearts had gone.

“Hmph. Seen you do better.”

“But Harry, don’t you see? The Queen has vanished from this hand. She’s been erased, just like someone who tried an unwise lateral acquisition spell.”

“And…?”

“But the Queen hasn’t disappeared. I mean the playing card hasn’t stopped existing. It’s a solid object; it can’t simply not exist.” He made a dramatic flourish with his other hand and the Queen of Hearts appeared as if by magic in his fingers. “It’s gone somewhere else!”

“Your point?”

“If things are erased from their reality, where do they go? What if Clarissa is telling the truth after all? What if she didn’t summon Erudition and all those spirits to create her construct in our reality? Perhaps she summoned it in another reality! When she was erased from there she was sent _here_ , a reality where she never existed. She can’t ever have existed in a reality where she existed before, so instead she’s moved to a reality where she can exist _now_.”

“What about all that clever stuff, like working out which spirits to summon and then sticking them all together.”

“The Spirits told her, just like she said they did!”

“Prof said the spirits are bound not to.”

“Yes! In this reality! But what if they aren’t bound that way in the reality where Clarissa is from?! In that reality, perhaps there is no Fourth Law of Magic and the rules for making constructs are much more relaxed. It all makes sense. It’s why she has that dress receipt and the bank statement that look real but no-one has heard of. It’s because they come from the dressmaker and the bank in the other reality! And Mrs de Montfort didn’t recognise the dress pattern because it doesn’t exist in this reality! It even explains why Clarissa thought you were Ms Cunningham’s assistant when we first met. Presumably in her bizarre reality, you are!”

“Makes sense.”

“Er… really?” Sid stopped and thought for a moment. “Then please could you explain it to me?”

“It fits all the facts. Damn and blast.”

“Oh, you don’t think it’s the right answer after all?”

“What? Oh answer’s fine. But how do we make money out of it?”

“Ah, yes there is that.”

“Nothing to do about it today. Let’s have an early night and then get this mess sorted out tomorrow. Be a busy day. Be back here at eight.”

“Righto.” Sid gathered his coat and hat.

“Oh and Sid,” Harry called after him as he was at the door, “nicely done.” The praise meant more to Sidney Malik than she could possibly realise and he grinned like an idiot all the way home.

\---------------*

The next morning saw Sid back at Harry’s Office at five minutes to eight, the early start more than compensated for by his buoyant feelings at having impressed Harry. There was indeed a busy morning ahead of them. First they went back to see Professor Arbuthnot, to check that Sid’s solution to the case did actually made sense. To Sid’s relief it did. The Professor was annoyed for no more than 30 seconds by the fact that a failed undergraduate had found the solution where he had not, but once he’d overcome such uncharitable thoughts, he was full of enthusiasm and new ideas.

“A most impressive piece of reasoning, Mr Malik,” he said, with genuine admiration. “This is a quite fascinating phenomenon and has far reaching implications. It will take years to consider all the theoretical insights this will provide. For instance, it’s always been assumed that an object can’t exist without a time line; after all it can’t exist for an infinitesimal amount of time. But of course if the time line is destroyed and the object itself is expelled from reality it has to go somewhere; the law of mass conservation says that matter can be converted but it cannot be destroyed. So the expelled matter is moved to another reality, where it will begin to create a future time line, but have no past. I must begin a paper for the Royal Society at once. You don’t mind if I put you down as a co-author do you?”

Sid beamed with pride. He did not mind at all. “This could explain so much,” continued the Professor. “All those unexplained appearances. And that strange incident at the Hotel Gula; we’re still trying to get to the bottom of that, but some kind of lateral acquisition was definitely involved. How many others like Ms Crimpleshaw are there in this World? And think of some of the practical applications. Why you could…” Soon an entire blackboard was filled with thaumaturgic geometry that neither of the visitors understood but nevertheless convinced them that Clarissa Crimpleshaw had indeed come from Outside.

Finally Harry managed to interrupt the flow.

“All well and good, but what to do with Ms Crimpleshaw? Can you send her back?”

“Back? Hm. No, that would be impossible. According to the latest theory, there are many, many different planes; too many to count. If you were to pick up a grain of sand from the beach, could you replace it in exactly the same spot? Anyway, her timeline has ceased to exist there. No-one would recognise her where she came from, any more than they do here.”

“Hmph, looks like she’s here for good then.”

“Surely she can’t stay at the asylum,” protested Sid. “Not now we’ve shown that she isn’t actually insane.

“She could enrol as a student to retake her exams and then follow her career as an academic,” suggested Professor Arbuthnot. “She has been breaking the rules, but I’m sure she has learned her lesson and she sounds a talented wizard.”

“Of course, she won’t be able to ask the Spirits for help now.”

“Good point! You know, it would be fascinating to talk to her. She comes from a reality that is like ours but is clearly different in so many ways. What a wonderful research opportunity.”

“You’re going to use her as a lab rat.”

“No! Of course not. Perhaps, just a little. But she will be contributing so much to our knowledge - and she’ll learn from us too.”

“In the meantime, where is she going to stay?”

“She could stay with…” began Sid.

“Not staying in my spare room,” interrupted Harry, forcibly.

“I was going to suggest that she stays with her parents.”

“They’re not her parents.”

“But they are, sort of. And didn’t Mrs de Montfort say how much Mrs Crimpleshaw wanted a daughter? Now she has one, only without all the horrible bits of changing nappies, toddler tantrums in the greengrocers and sulky thirteen-year olds.”

“May have a point there.”

“Anyway, first let’s get Ms Crimpleshaw released!”

The Professor went with them to the asylum as he was more likely to be believed by the Doctors. To Sid’s relief, they rode with him in his Brougham, rather than having to walk. Harry did indeed have’ some difficulty persuading Dr Morningthorpe that Ms Crimpleshaw was not a lunatic until the Professor repeated his incomprehensible 30-minute lecture on the theory of alternative planes and filled a blackboard full of arcane symbols so impressive that no-one thought to question them.

Then it was a case of breaking the news to the patient. Harry went in with Sid and for once she let him do the talking. She sat in her accustomed position on the chair and filled her pipe. She watched while Sid sat next to Ms Crimpleshaw on the bed and explained what had happened to her. She watched as Ms Crimpleshaw dissolved into tears of relief and thanked Sid for saving her. She watched Ms Crimpleshaw hug Sid affectionately and Sid, with tears of his own in his eyes, hug her back. ‘There’, she told herself, ‘I’m not jealous; not jealous at all’. She went to light her pipe and realised she’s been holding her Congreves so tightly she’d crushed the box.

They brought in Professor Arbuthnot. Clarissa looked rather scared of him at first and Harry realised it must be difficult for her to talk to someone she had known for years but who didn’t know her. ‘Better get in practise’, she thought ‘because you have a much more difficult encounter to come’.

After a few awkward introductions, the Professor began to ask questions about the various summons required to create the construct for lateral displacement. Harry was not sure if he had done this deliberately, but it was certainly a successful method of getting Clarissa to relax. The conversation soon became very technical.

“Tell me Ms Crimpleshaw,” asked Harry, seeking to return to a more practical level, “why didn’t you mention this deletion effect yesterday? We might have worked out what was going on sooner. You were holding it back weren’t you?”

“I was afraid that – that I’d accidentally erased someone. I knew about the danger, but I’d always been careful to keep the duplicates and the originals apart. But I didn’t keep the originals; it wouldn’t do to duplicate the same note more than once, so I spent them once I’d spent the duplicate. But a couple of times I’d felt an odd pulse; something only a powerful wizard would feel, and I wondered if it might have been an erasure; but I told myself that it was just my imagination. It could have been anything.”

“Let me guess. You spent the duplicates and originals in the same shops at different times and sooner or later, some poor shop assistant or clerk brought two of them together, probably when they noticed that two notes had the same number.”

Clarissa looked at the floor.

“Hmph, and you’d been to your dress shop that morning. Occurs to me that there was one thing in your possessions that you should have had but didn’t. You didn’t have any money. Not even a purse with a few coins. Betting you were hoisted by your own petard. You paid for your fancy new dress at the shop didn’t you? They gave you change including one of the stolen sovereigns you’d already palmed off on them and you still had the original in your purse didn’t you? And then – welcome to the new reality.”

Ms Crimpleshaw could only nod her head in shame. Sid gave Clarissa a supporting pat on the hand. She looked up at him and shyly smiled. Harry silently lied to herself.

“Fascinating!” exclaimed the Professor. “Of course, the duplicates and the objects adjacent to them would move orthogonally to the agents of the Event in order to conserve dweomic momentum and…” he took a notebook and pencil from his pocket and began scribbling furiously.

There was of course an awful lot of paperwork to fill in before Clarissa Crimpleshaw could finally be released. Dr Morningthorpe was clearly disappointed to lose such a potential popular attraction, but he put a brave face on it and sat down to write to the printers cancelling the new promotional posters.

Finally, Clarissa was free to go. The clothes she had been wearing when she arrived were produced, carefully cleaned and pressed.

“I’m impressed that they’ve looked after her dress so well,” Sid remarked to Harry as they waited for her to change. Harry did not disillusion him by telling him that they had doubtless been made ready for the Ms Crimpleshaw’s presentation to the public.

Clarissa reappeared from the changing room, looking once again the confident independent modern young woman.

“There is one thing, Mrs Barker,” she asked Harry, “the keepers say you still have my possessions. Could I have them back please?”

“They’ll still be back at the office,” said Harry, “I’m sure we can…”

“Actually Clarissa,” said Sid, sheepishly fishing in his pockets, “It so happens that I have them here.” He handed over the earrings, necklace and gold bangle.

“Oh Sidney! How thoughtful of you! Thank you!” Clarissa gave Sid a peck on the cheek as she accepted her jewellery. Sid blushed bright red. At last his strange condition had actually proven useful.

“Now for the difficult bit,” said Harry. “The most logical thing would be for you to go back and live with your parents; that is Mr and Mrs Crimpleshaw. But they don’t know you.”

“I remember. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the look of fear on Mother’s face.”

“Here’s the plan. I’ll go round and see them – we’ve been introduced. But I’m damned if I’m wearing that bloody bonnet again and to Hell with…” She saw the odd looks on the faces of the Professor and Ms Crimpleshaw. “Never mind. As I was saying, I’ll go round and explain things and see what they say. Then, if they agree, I can take you there this evening and introduce you properly.”

“Where can I go until then?” asked Clarissa.

“Come back with me to the University,” suggested Professor Arbuthnot. “There’s so many questions I’d like to ask you about your work and the plane you came from. What are the differences? What are the similarities? I’m sure lots of my colleagues will want to talk to you too. You’ll be quite the centre of attraction. Then we’ll need to see about getting you enrolled as a part of the University. You’ll probably have to take your exams again, but I’m sure you won’t find that a problem.”

“Not a problem at all,” smiled Clarissa.

With all the formalities complete, they took the Professor’s Brougham back to the University. Harry forced herself not to get in front of Sid so she could sit next to Ms Crimpleshaw instead of him. She still had a point to prove to herself and the teasing voice of her youngest sister in her left ear. She sat and listened to the Professor explaining all the myriad avenues of research that ‘the Malik Effect’ opened up, while Ms Crimpleshaw sat far too close to Sid and told him how grateful she was.

\-----------*

Once they were all back in the Professor’s Office, they sat down and decided on a plan of attack. Professor Arbuthnot suggested it might be best to approach the Crimpleshaw’s via the police officer who had taken charge of Ms Crimpleshaw when she first arrived. Both Harry and Clarissa soon vetoed that idea. For one thing, Clarissa was still not convinced that the Captain had not been one of ‘Them’. Despite everything, she still could not shake off the conspiracy theories she had convinced herself were responsible for her predicament. Florrie would have been able to get them in through the door again, but as at the moment Harry wasn’t talking to that sister either, that wasn’t an option. Besides, arguments about bonnets and dresses would have wasted far too much time.

In the end they decided to let the Professor lead. As a prominent academic his word carried far more weight and respectability than any mere hunter. First he sent a messenger to the factory where Mr Crimpleshaw worked as a supervisor, asking for him to be allowed the afternoon off owing to an important family matter, and another letter to 13 Uxbridge Road, to give warning of their arrival at 3pm.

They left Ms Crimpleshaw at the University with the administrators to arrange for her admission (or possibly readmission) to the University. There were all sorts of questions to be answered, especially how much the Magic in Clarissa’s reality differed from this one, and just exactly how much she would have to relearn before she could be (re)awarded a degree.

At 3pm they ran the gauntlet of the regiments of flowers in the front garden and the cute children and kitten pictures in the hall of 13 Uxbridge Road. The maid showed them into the front parlour, now occupied by Mr Crimpleshaw as well as his wife, who both looked worried by this summons and the descent into their midst of Aristotle from the heights of his ivory tower. When they found out what a high-performing academic was actually like they hid their disappointment well. As for Miss Harriet turning up in trousers and smelling of stale tobacco, well! The least said about that the better. They weren’t quite sure who the young man was, although he did seem to have a remarkably informal relationship with Ms Barber and called her ‘Harry’. Being charitable people, they decided that he must be her cousin.

Harry let the Professor do most of the talking, but it was soon apparent that their hosts did not understand what he was trying to tell them.

“Let me see if I understand you correctly,” asked Mr Crimpleshaw eventually. “We have a daughter whom neither of us have never met, who has been living in France, who has been looked after by someone who is like us but is different, and she wants to come and live with us because she’s been joining people together. And this is the same person the Police brought here last week and made a scene.” Professor Arbuthnot sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“No, not exactly…”

“It’s like this,” Harry told them. “There has been a magical accident at the University. As a result, this woman, who is in fact your daughter, and all the life you spent together, have been magically erased from your memories; all her possessions have gone too.”

“Ah, magic,” mused Mr Crimpleshaw.

“This is your daughter, even though you have no memory of her. She has a memory of you and loves you. With your permission, we’d like to bring her here tonight so you can meet her.”

“Well. I don’t know I’m sure,” said Mrs Crimpleshaw. “Either she is my daughter or she isn’t and I most certainly don’t recall ever having a daughter. I’m sure I would have remembered.”

“Please,” said Sid. “Clarissa really is your daughter and she has been through the most terrible ordeal. What she needs now is her mother. Her mother’s love to comfort her and bring her home.”

“I don’t know…”

“You’ve always yearned to have a daughter. This is why. Because you’ve had a daughter but never realised it.”

“No,” said Mr Crimpleshaw, “I don’t think…”

“Yes,” interrupted his wife. “Yes, at least bring her here tonight and we can meet her, talk to her. If she truly is my daughter, I’ll not leave her alone and in distress. Bring her here and then… then we’ll see.”

So that was decided upon.

\---------------------*

That evening Sid, Harry and Clarissa were back at 13 Uxbridge Road. The Professor dropped them off, but after due thought they’d decided it would best if he didn’t come in, or hang around outside with the carriage. The less people present the better. If things didn’t work out, Harry and Sid would hire a Hackney Carriage and drive Ms Crimpleshaw back to the student hostel, where she could spend the night. Clarissa was nervous, entering the house where she’d lived all her life but which was now subtlety unfamiliar.

“It’s the same only different,” she whispered to Sid as he escorted her down the hall. “All these pictures – they were pictures of me, not someone else’s children.” The maid showed them into the front parlour; not an encouraging sign. The front parlour was only used for visitors. Family and friends would have been shown to the living room. The visitors sat on one side of the room, Mr and Mrs Crimpleshaw, in their best clothes, on the other. The hosts were stiff and formal, asking about their visitors’ health and making comments about the weather while Beryl poured out the tea. Unlike Harry’s previous visit, Mrs Crimpleshaw displayed a remarked reluctance to talk.

Once the tea had finally been distributed and Beryl had gone back to the scullery, Harry decided it was time to get down to business. She knew she had until the teacups were drained to make her case.

“Mrs Crimpleshaw, Mr Crimpleshaw. Thank you for seeing us. I’d like to introduce you to your daughter, Clarissa. Know you don’t remember her, but she has lived here all her life and has fond memories of you.” Clarissa smiled bravely.

“Mother, father, I know this must sound strange, but I truly am your daughter. Even if you don’t know me, then please, let me talk to you and tell me all about my happy memories of you and my wonderful childhood.”

“I’ve always wanted a daughter so much,” said Mrs Crimpleshaw, “and now here you are, a full grown woman. But I don’t know. I don’t know you. How can you remember me?”

“But I have so many happy memories of you, right from when I was little. I remember the doll you gave me. The doll your father made for _you_ when you were a girl.”

“My old doll?”

“Yes! Please, you must remember! Grandfather wasn’t so good with his hands, but he so proud to have a daughter and wanted to make you a toy of your own. Grandmother took one look at him and christened him ‘Isiah’.

“Isiah?” With a strange mixture of fear and hope, Mrs Crimpleshaw reached into a box beside her chair. “I had Beryl get this old chest out of the attic. All my old memories and banished hopes.” She pulled out a crudely made stuffed doll, a soldier in a uniform of forty years ago with what was probably meant to be a tricorn hat. The stitched face was unsymmetrical, distorted. “Isiah. I’ve kept him all these years because I never had a daughter to pass him on to. And Mama called him Isiah because…”

“Because one eye’s ‘igher than the other,” exclaimed Clarissa triumphantly. Suddenly, Mrs Crimpleshaw started to believe.

“I used to go to sleep every night with that doll,” explained Clarissa. “You would always say that he was there to guard me against the monsters under the bed while I slept.”

“Oh, that’s exactly what Mama used to tell me.”

Mrs Crimpleshaw, who had been sitting back in her chair, leant forward towards her daughter. Clarissa leant forward too. They looked into each other’s eyes, as though they were recognising each other for the first time. Sid wondered if there might be some connection across realities that meant Mrs Crimpleshaw knew the daughter she had never had, and why for all these years she had longed for the girl who wasn’t there. By the time the tea was cool enough to drink, Mrs Crimpleshaw was listening enraptured to all the stories of Clarissa’s happy childhood.

“Come along Sid,” ordered Harry, getting to her feet, “Time we were off.”

“But we haven’t finished our tea!” exclaimed Sid, horrified at the _faux pas_. He saw the expression on her face, hurriedly put down his cup, palmed a couple of the biscuits for later and hauled himself to his feet with a flustered apology. Mrs Crimpleshaw and Clarissa smiled at them and said a brief goodbye, and then returned to the serious business of bonding. It was left for Mr Crimpleshaw to see his guests to the door. He didn’t want to disturb his wife and, apparently, daughter.

“How can we ever thank you?” he asked.

“My invoice will be in the post,” said Harry matter-of-factly. She had the satisfaction of seeing Mr. Crimpleshaw go ever so slightly pale.

\------------*

 “That went better than I expected,” Harry said to Sid. They were walking back to the office in the fading light of a spring evening with the new magical street lamps of Widdershins beginning to kindle, matching the warm glow they both felt at a mother and daughter reunited (in a manner of speaking), a mystery solved and the prospect of money in the bank.

“Do you think they’ll accept her?” Sid asked.

“Reckon so. They all want the story to be true, even if it isn’t.”

“But we did find the right answer didn’t we?”

“Think so. If I’m any judge of character, mother and daughter will be ready to start hugging each other any time now and when that happens…”

Sid suddenly stopped dead, a look of pure horror on his face.

“The necklaces Harry! They’re both wearing their necklaces! What happens if they touch?!”

“What necklaces? Who?” asked Harry, but Sid had turned and was already sprinting back down Uxbridge Road. His shiny top hat flew from his head and rolled discarded in the gutter. Harry had no idea what had suddenly spooked her apprentice so badly, but the fact that he had not only abandoned his most prized possession but was also indulging in energetic activity spoke of a dire emergency. Scooping up the hat, she followed him at top speed. Sid reached the gate of number 13.

 “Oh no! The flowers Harry! Look at the flowers!” he cried, rushing up the path to the house and banging on the front door.

“Flowers?” asked Harry, looking at the plain and somewhat neglected front garden. “But there aren’t any flowers.”

“I KNOW!” Before Harry could ask what the Devil he was talking about, Mr Crimpleshaw opened his front door. He was dressed in a well-worn tweed jacket and carpet slippers.  Behind him, Sid could see that the hall was lined with stuffed fish in glass display cases.

“Yes? Can I help you young man?” he asked amiably, looking politely perturbed at his visitor’s deranged distress.

“Is Clarissa here?” Sid asked desperately. “I need to see Clarissa!”

“I suppose so. She’s in the parlour.” Sid felt a momentary surge of hope.

“Clarissa!” called Mr Crimpleshaw. “Here, girl!” An elderly black Labrador walked stiffly out of the parlour and ambled down the hall to her owner. “Good girl Clarissa,” said Mr Crimpleshaw and patted her head. “I’m afraid she’s getting rather old now. Over twenty you know.” Clarissa wagged her tail and snuffled the visitors with her grey muzzle in the hope of biscuits. “Look, I’m sorry if she’s been in your dustbins. I’ll come round and clean up if she’s made a mess.”

“No!  No, I don’t mean your dog! I mean your… I mean…” Sid clutched his head in confusion.

“Are you feeling quite well, young man?”

“Sid, what the H-, what on earth has got into you.” growled Harry with a mixture of concern and anger, remembering just in time that she was in a respectable neighbourhood.

“But Harry, you must remember his… you must remember…” Sid felt there was something very important on the tip of his tongue that he had to recall, had to hold on to. And then, like a dream that is so real in sleep but disperses like smoke on waking, it slipped away and was gone. “I’ve forgotten something!” he wailed, “something really important!” Harry looked at him sceptically and then turned to Mr Crimpleshaw.

“I’m so sorry, Sir. He’s from Surrey.”

“Ah. Poor fellow,” nodded Mr Crimpleshaw sympathetically. Harry turned back to her apprentice with genuine concern.

“I think perhaps you’ve been over doing the magic studies Sid. Come on, let’s go back to the office and I’ll make you a nice cup of tea.”

“Yes, yes… that would be a good idea,” replied Sid. He still looked dazed. “Er… sorry for disturbing you, Mr er…”

“Crimpleshaw. Don’t mention it, old boy, I quite understand. Are you sure he’s going to be alright?” he asked Harry.

“Don’t worry Sir, I’ll see he makes it home,” Harry assured him, and with all the care of a worried mother, took Sid by the elbow and gently guided him out to the street and back to their office. She sat him down in the second best armchair by the fire (having first pacified its owner with a piece of good beef) and made him a cup of tea.

Sid sat and stared into the fire. He was still preoccupied with the awful feeling that he had forgotten something. Something very important.

Harry puffed on her pipe and watched him drink his tea. She was troubled by Sid’s sudden attack. But what perplexed her most was how he had known the name of a complete stranger’s dog.

**Author's Note:**

> Captain Nicola Barber, Ms Harriet Barber, Mr Sidney Malik, Grenwich, Ms Verity Cunningham and the town of Widdershins are the creations of Kate Ashwin


End file.
